SEPTA will sell pope passes by lottery

SEPTA will use a one-day online lottery to sell Regional Rail passes for the papal visit, transportation authority officials said Tuesday.

A new website will open at 12:01 a.m. Monday and close at 11:59 p.m., and would-be buyers will be limited to 10 passes for each of the two days of the pope's visit in September. The link to the lottery will be available at SEPTA's website, www.septa.org.

The lottery winners will be selected at random after the site closes. Winners will be notified by e-mail on Aug. 6, and they will then be given three days to pay for their passes.

Passes will be mailed to the winners within two to three weeks of receipt of payment.

By using a lottery, SEPTA hopes to avoid the electronic stampede that overwhelmed the first attempt to sell papal passes last week. The sales site crashed within minutes of opening.

"No matter what time you enter the site, everyone has the same chance of being selected," SEPTA spokeswoman Jerri Williams said Tuesday.

After the lottery closes Monday, lottery operators will try to screen out fraudulent, duplicate, and "other suspicious entries," SEPTA said, to "help ensure the passes are purchased by those who want to come to see the pope and are also available for regular customers who need to get to work or have other travel needs."

No special provisions are being made for people who usually take SEPTA to get to work, she said.

"If you want to ride the Regional Rail as a regular rider going to work or as someone coming into see the pope, you have to enter," said Williams.

SEPTA plans to sell 175,000 one-day rail passes at $10 apiece for each of the two days of Pope Francis' visit on Sept. 26 and 27. Customers must have a papal pass to ride on Regional Rail trains on each of the two days.

(On a typical Saturday, there are about 24,000 Regional Rail riders, and on a typical Sunday, about 18,750. On a typical weekday, about 66,500 riders make round trips on Regional Rail.)

At Jefferson Station, a reporter asked dozens of commuters whether they planned to see the pope, and most said they planned to stay away.

Houston Ryan was not among them. The 36-year-old from Germantown said he would come to Center City with his wife for the pope's visit.

Ryan said the lottery seemed reasonable, "as long as it's not overly complicated."

Another exception was Jim Womer, 67, of West Mount Airy. He smiled wryly when he learned about the lottery.

"It sounds like something that someone at SEPTA would come up with," Womer said. "I'll give it a shot and see what happens."

The lottery will be run by Ticketleap Inc., an online ticket-sales and event-marketing company based in Philadelphia, and hosted by Amazon.com, the online retail giant.

Another vendor, CapTech Inc., headquartered in Richmond, Va., was in charge of the failed effort last week.

Ticketleap was recommended to SEPTA by an Amazon executive, according to Bill Zebrowski, SEPTA senior information technology director, and the company will be paid 75 cents per pass sold. If all 350,000 sell, that would be $262,500.

SEPTA spent about $110,000 on the failed site by CapTech, which Williams said will still be used for online sales of other items, such as SEPTA merchandise.

Reselling of passes at higher prices is a distinct possibility, SEPTA acknowledged, though Williams said "we hope people around the region don't take advantage and scalp the tickets."

SEPTA will announce next week the details of its plans to sell three-day papal passes for SEPTA's subways, trolleys, and buses.

SEPTA plans to sell 750,000 of those transit passes, good for Sept. 26 through 28. On subways, trolleys, and buses, customers can also use tokens, and regular weekly and monthly passes.

Meg Kane, a spokeswoman for the World Meeting of Families, said the group, which is hosting the pope, "will do all it can to help visitors, whether out of state or out of country, to learn of the new lottery system. Regarding other options, city transit, subway, and trolley will still be available, and we would recommend that both residents and visitors evaluate these options and plan accordingly."

Stung by criticism from regular riders, SEPTA officials said they were considering refunds for weekly Trailpass holders who won't be allowed to use their passes on Regional Rail trains during the two-day papal visit. Monthly pass holders are not being considered for a refund because their passes are already "deeply discounted," Williams said.

More information about papal rail passes is available at www.septa.org/fares/special-papal-visit.

215-854-4587@nussbaumpaul

Inquirer staff writers Robert Moran and Julia Terruso contributed to this article.