SEPTA kicks off lottery for papal regional rail passes

And they're off.

SEPTA's website is up and running, taking entries for their online lottery for those prized papal regional rail passes for the visit by Pope Francis in late September.

The sign-ups in the lottery went online at 12:01 a.m. and SEPTA reports no problem. The word from SEPTA early this morning? So far, so good. About 2,500 people had signed up by 5:30 a.m. Those interested in scoring the chance to purchase the passes have up until 11:59 p.m. to put in their request.

The Ticketleap page posted to SEPTA.org will remain open until 11:59 Monday night.

A reminder: There is no need to rush onto the site. SEPTA assures that all submissions that are put in today have an equal chance of winning the passes that riders will need to use the system on Sept. 26-27.

After the deadline passes tonight, SEPTA will review the submissions to delete duplicate entries and possible scammers. Those selected will be notified by email on Thursday.

SEPTA is still planning to sell 175,000 of the special passes for each day. They cost $10 a pop and winners will be eligible to buy 10 passes.

Of course, SEPTA went to this lottery plan after their first online foray into ticket sales did not go so well. SEPTA's computers crashed minutes after they went online and sales opened. Eventually SEPTA shut down the system and took a week to devise the lottery system.

In the meantime, we reviewed some of SEPTA's planning here in Delaware County on Sunday.

In my Monday print column, I noted that we here at the Daily Times will be at something of ground zero for the event, since the Primos Train Station, one of only two stations that will be utilized on the heavily used Media-Elwyn line, is literally in our back yard.

There is one thing that I have been wondering about, however.

Amid all the hoopla and mania surrounding this event, it's easy to forget that we have done this before.

That's right, there were more than a million people on the Parkway back in 1989 when Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass.

I know, we live in a different world. Security is everything.

I think we're about to find out just how different.