August 04, 2015
When Regional Rail papal passes were put on sale last week on a first-come-first-serve basis, the site crashed after thousands of visitors tried to log on simultaneously.
The agency regrouped and on Monday a lottery for the passes went live online for 24 hours.
This time “everything went beautifully,” SEPTA spokeswoman Jerri Williams said in an email.
But the tickets may not have sold out Monday.
According to SEPTA, when the lottery closed, only about 38,000 requests for tickets had been made. There are a total of 350,000 papal passes available for when Pope Francis comes to Philadelphia for the weekend of Sept. 26 and 27.
According to Williams, there should be a comprehensive count of how many tickets were requested later Tuesday but on average, each requester asked for an average of five to seven passes for each day. Each requester could have asked for a maximum of 10 passes for each day.
In an attempt to expedite travel into Center City, SEPTA will only shuttle passengers from 18 Regional Rail stations. The rail passes, which cost $10, will only be good for travel from the station selected. And papal passes are the only tickets that will be usable on regional rail that weekend - monthly transit passes and cash fares will not be accepted.
About 1.5 million people are expected to flood the city for the pope's visit. To get to Center City where major events like the papal mass will take place, travelers are strongly discouraged from driving, which makes walking and public transportation key arteries to the weekend’s events.
“We know some stations will definitely sell out,” said Williams referring to the fact that requesters had to select specific stations they wanted for their passes. “Those that don't? What we do with them depends on how many passes are left.”
Winners will be informed starting on Thursday by email about whether they won and how they can complete their transaction. The rail passes will be mailed to the winners. Ticketleap, a Philadelphia-based online ticket vendor, handled the logistics of the lottery, including weeding out fraud or duplicate requests. The website was hosted by Amazon.
Staff writer John Kopp contributed to this report.
