SEPTA Sales Of One-Day Regional Rail Papal Passes Suspended For Remainder Of Week
By Mark Abrams
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- SEPTA will not resume the sale of regional rail passes for the pope's visit in September for the remainder of the week, the transit agency announced on Tuesday.
SEPTA's Andrew Busch says technical personnel working on the system don't feel confident trying to re-start the online e-commerce site for the rest of this week.
The site - which was set up to sell passes for the regional rails for September 26 and September 27 when Pope Francis is here in Philadelphia - crashed within minutes of going online Monday morning.
SEPTA officials say even though technicians and a consultant tested the system, it was overwhelmed by the numbers of people trying to access and purchase the one-day passes.
SEPTA decided to take the system down within 90 minutes.
Officials acknowledged that a little over 200 passes were processed, with many online users unable to process orders in their carts.
SEPTA says it still has nearly 175,000 passes available for each of the days.
At this point, Busch says the transit agency is considering a couple of options, including looking to an outside contractor to actually handle the sale of the passes.
Busch says SEPTA officials don't know when they'll resume the sale of the passes, but pledged there will be 24-hour notice to the public when the site is finally ready to go.
