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SEPTA: Regional Rail Tickets For Papal Visit To Go On Sale Monday By Lottery

By Mike DeNardo

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- SEPTA says Papal visit regional rail tickets will go on sale Monday, August 3, by lottery.

According to SEPTA, the lottery system is being designed to accommodate heavy demand.

Officials say, "Ticketleap will launch the Papal Visit One Day Regional Rail Pass lottery website on Aug. 3 at 12:01 a.m., and keep it open until 11:59 p.m."

SEPTA assures that all valid submissions have the same chances of winning the lottery, regardless of what time they are submitted.

"Valid entries will be put in a database and winners selected at random by Ticketleap. Customers with winning entries will receive a "congratulations" email on Thursday. Aug. 6, with a personalized link to a secured page where they can complete their transaction with a debit or credit card. SEPTA will mail the passes to customers," SEPTA said in a press release.

 

 

According to SEPTA, the one-day passes are $10 each and required for travel on the regional rail during the Papal Visit on  September 26 and September 27.

Meanwhile, the city transit picture is becoming more clear.

Papal pilgrims taking the Broad Street Line or the Frankford El now know where they'll have to get off.

SEPTA confirms that westbound passengers on the Market-Frankford Line will be dropped off at Second Street. Eastbound, El service will end at 30th Street. On the Broad Street Line, southbound trains will stop at Spring Garden, and northbound trains will let all passengers off at Walnut-Locust.

SEPTA plans to sell special three-day transit passes for the papal visit, but not until after it solves technical issues that crashed sales of Regional Rail tickets.

SEPTA's Jeri Williams says the lottery system ensures everyone gets a fair shot.

"It doesn't make a difference what time of the day that you submit your lottery entry."

KYW's Tim Jimenez caught up with a regular SEPTA commuter, Carmen, who won't be going into town but thinks the lottery is a good idea.

"All of the passes were going to be gone within the first five minutes basically, and probably a lot of those people were going to be scalping them and I think that would be terrible," Carmen says.

SEPTA says there's only so much they can do to limit scalping. Local company Ticket Leap will sort out duplicate entries and suspicious ones.

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