More Than 100K SEPTA Papal Passes Still Available
By Justin Udo, Syma Chowdhry
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - With less than a month to go until Pope Francis' arrival in Philadelphia, Septa has more than 100,000 one-day Regional Rail passes available for the big weekend.
The agency made around 200,000 passes available each day, but after a failed ticket sales launch, a lottery and a few weeks of in-person sales, they still have a lot of tickets left.
"To date, our Saturday one-day Papal pass sales on Saturday are 50,000. That's more than double our Saturday ridership. On Sunday the number exceeds 60,000, more than triple our Sunday ridership," says SEPTA's Ron Hopkins.
He says one-day passes cost $10:
"Tickets are on sale at their respective SEPTA station ticket offices."
SEPTA General Manager Joseph Casey admits their expectations were higher, "but we're here to move masses of people. We still have a month and we hope people decide to come."
He says they even thought they would have sold out by now:
"They might be apprehensive, I know there's a lot of vacancies in hotels downtown, but we want people in the region to know that this is a historic event."
The agency has also put out a plan on how their buses will run inside of the Francis festival grounds. Each station is less than a two-mile walk to the festivities.
SEPTA also released new information about the airport line. Instead of just transporting airline passengers -- now anyone can come and park at the airport and take the train in on September 26 and 27th. All you need is a Papal pass or pre-purchased tickets.
"It's easy to get here," Casey says. "It's not going to be the long waits or the long walks that have previously been reported -- this is an easy event to get to and I don't want anyone to regret not coming to it."
