SEPTA papal passes for sale on Craigslist, eBay

Some lottery entrants who won SEPTA Regional Rail passes for the September papal visit are already trying to sell their tickets online.

Listings for passes have begun popping up on Craigslist and eBay, with most of the sellers seeking between $30 and $50 per ticket.

After a lottery this week, at least 22,000 of the $10 passes still remain available. The number could grow as lottery winners decide whether or not to go ahead with their purchases.

SEPTA is offering 175,000 tickets for each day of the Sept. 26 and 27 papal visit, or 350,000 total. The transit agency received requests for 328,045 passes during the Monday lottery.

Those who won tickets were notified Thursday and have until Sunday to complete their purchases. Riders could request up to 10 tickets each.

Some of the secondary-market sellers offered single tickets, while others are looking to sell multiple passes. Some posted screenshots of their lottery-notification e-mails, in an effort to demonstrate they had been awarded the tickets.

Craigslist and eBay tickets are available for a range of stations. A few of the sellers noted the significant road closures planned for the weekend and the limited number of Regional Rail tickets available in making their pitches to prospective buyers.

"Train passes are critical," one eBay seller, offering tickets from Wilmington, wrote, citing the road closures.

"Get them fast!!" a Norristown seller wrote in a Craigslist ad. "They will not last and the price will be going up."

SEPTA said there's nothing the agency can do about the secondary market, but urged potential buyers to be careful.

"We have no way of monitoring or policing the resale of papal passes," spokeswoman Kristin Geiger said. She said SEPTA wanted "to caution people from buying passes from people they don't know and discourage people from buying tickets above the stated value."

Though the number of tickets available exceeds the number of requests, some lottery entrants may still have missed out.

Pass-buyers had to choose a specific station and time period, and some stations and slots may have sold out. As of Friday morning, it wasn't known yet which stations, if any, sold out and which still had tickets available.

That information is expected to be released next Friday, Geiger said.

The lottery, administered by TicketLeap, was SEPTA's second go at selling the passes, which are required for Regional Rail riders during the pontiff's visit to Philadelphia at the conclusion of the World Meeting of Families.

A huge demand for the tickets crashed the transit agency's site on July 27, prompting SEPTA to turn to the lottery system.

For the papal visit, Regional Rail trains will be running express-style service from a limited number of stops.