SEPTA’s papal pass lottery proceeds perfectly

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After a horrible initial attempt that crashed the SEPTA website for papal rail tickets, the second try proceeded much more smoothly. 

And the lottery entries are in, said Jerri Williams of SEPTA shortly after online registration closed at midnight.

“The final number for the SEPTA lottery at midnight was 38,013 lottery entries,” she said.

Winners will be notified and will be able to buy up to 10 tickets to ride the trains into Philadelphia to see Pope Francis Sept. 26 and 27. Williams said SEPTA has not come up with a plan to deal with any extra passes should they be available.

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Altogether, 350,000 passes are available — 175,000 for each day of the papal visit.

“We’re not quite sure what we are going to do.  It depends on what passes are left over,” Williams said. “We expect most of our stations will be sold out … there might be a few stations that have some passes left.”

Tickets for the city’s buses subways and trolleys will be next, but a date for the sale of those passes has not been announced.

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