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Bills from pope visit grow

The transportation costs for the pope's September visit have gotten larger.

SEPTA released Monday its overtime costs associated with the papal tour of Philadelphia. $2.3 million. The transportation agency also released Monday its ridership numbers for September. Across all its services ridership was down 5 percent from September 2014, which represents about $500,000 in lost revenue, said agency spokesman Andrew Busch.

Add that to the previously announced cost of $1.6 million in expenses, and SEPTA's bill for the time around September 26th and 27th nears $4 million.

SEPTA's estimates come a few days after the Delaware River Port Authority announced it lost about $1.4 million in revenue that weekend due to the Ben Franklin Bridge closure and less traffic on other roads and bridges. The DRPA is still calculating overtime costs. Both agencies said they would be able to take the hit on the expenses and lost revenue.

"We have the majority of the fiscal year left," said Busch. "We'll be able to achieve some savings throughout the course of the year."

DRPA* brought in $8.4 million more in revenue than expected in the first half of 2015, said agency spokesman Kyle Anderson.

SEPTA has an annual budget of $1.3 billion. PATCO has a budget of $52.3 million.

*An earlier version of this post had said the $8.4 million more in revenue was PATCO's. PATCO is overseen by the DRPA and their budgets are calculated separately.