SEPTA Pleased With How It Handled Crowds During Papal Weekend
By Kim Glovas
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- SEPTA says it's Papal plan was ready for thousands to use the regional rails, but the volume showed up somewhere else.
SEPTA's Andrew Busch says the original plan was designed to handle 300-thousand rail passengers, but a little less than 63-thousand actually used that route.
He says the Broad Street Line was the hottest ticket in town.
"We had approximately 55-thousand people ride from the stadium complex to the Walnut-Locust station," says Bucsh, "so we saw a significant number of people use that option."
Busch says the other piece was having regional trains ready to go after the big events, like the Sunday afternoon mass.
"We had the Center City stations cleared of the large parts of the crowds by about 8:30. So within about 2-and a half hours after the event ended, we had the crowds cleared so we're very happy with how it went."