The Best Thing That Happened This Week: SEPTA Sold (a Couple of) Pope Passes

Never change, SEPTA.

SEPTA pope pass crash

Photo Illustration | Alyse Moyer. Pope Francis | giulio napolitano / Shutterstock.com. SEPTA Airport station | K. Ciappa for Visit Philadelphia™

When we first heard about SEPTA’s plans for the Pope’s visit, we’ll admit, we were a bit confused. We’ll need a special Pope Pass? TransPasses won’t be honored? Only 31 out of 282 stations will be open? One-day passes? Three-day passes? You can get in but you can’t get out? How the, um, hell is this going to work? But we’re people of faith, and besides, that nice lady in charge of all the planning told us not to panic. So on Monday morning, when the online-only Pope Pass sales began, we were right there, doing our darnedest to sign up. So conscientious were we in our duty that 54,000 of us descended on the site in the first minute, promptly dealing it a deadly blow. SEPTA had to cancel sales of the passes and still hasn’t resumed them. In the immortal words of Mayor Nutter when asked yet again about the papal fencing, “Oh, God.”

SEPTA never lets us down.

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