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SEPTA: Papal-pass lottery went 'really well'

The transit agency expects that winners will be notified by Sunday.

Update: SEPTA said early Tuesday it had received 38,013 entries. The number of passes requested should be known later in the day.

Earlier Story:

THE ONLINE lottery for SEPTA Regional Rail passes for the weekend of Pope Francis' visit went "really well" yesterday, with 33,976 people successfully entering the lottery by 10 p.m., according to SEPTA spokeswoman Jerri Williams.

The lottery was the transit agency's second attempt at selling the passes, after the first attempt July 20 resulted in a site crash due to high volume.

"It appears that the only problem that people were concerned with was the first-come, first-served concept of the initial real-time e-commerce site," Williams said. "I think the difference is people realized that they could go on at any time today to enter, as opposed to [July 20] when they felt like it was Black Friday and they had to get in the door right away."

For comparison, when SEPTA launched its original site, more than 54,000 people visited in the first minute. Yesterday, only 513 people entered the site in the first three minutes.

SEPTA accepted entries from 12:01 a.m. until 11:59 p.m. yesterday. Riders were only able to submit one entry, but could request up to 10 passes per entry. The number of passes requested was not known last night.

Only 175,000 passes are available for each day of the papal visit Sept. 26 and 27.

Winners of the lottery will be notified via email Thursday and will have three days to pay for their passes. Any passes that are unpaid after three days will be redistributed to other entrants on Sunday, Williams said.

"There may be people who [win] who don't complete the [payment] transaction," Williams said. "So just because you don't get notified on Thursday doesn't mean you don't have a chance."

Williams said the lottery system, which was hosted by Amazon.com, was recommended and run by local company Ticketleap. CapTech, the Philly firm that designed the initial e-commerce site, helped to test the lottery system before it went live yesterday, she said.

- Staff writer Vinny Vella

contributed to this report.

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