Philadelphia Issues Final Papal “Exclusion Zone”

A few weeks ago I posted a tentative look at Philadelphia’s “vehicle exclusion zone” for the visit of Pope Francis. Above is the final map. The rules:

Drive your car outside the green box above after Thursday, Sept. 24, and you can’t drive it back in until sometime Monday, Sept. 28. If your car is parked either within the area outlined in black above or on any of the streets highlighted in yellow, you will have to move it either to a parking space outside the area or to a garage or lot where you can store it for the duration of the papal visit. The most important thing, if you own a car, is getting that car out of the “secure vehicle perimeter” or off the “authorized vehicle routes” within the festival zone. No vehicles will be allowed to remain or travel within the areas outlined in black on the map above; similarly, the streets in yellow will be closed to all but emergency and support vehicles during the papal visit.

All that is just for personal vehicles. As for local mass transit:

Officials are urging pilgrims to take advantage of mass transit to get into the city. The PATCO High Speed Line will be expressing trains from four stations — Lindewold, Woodcrest, Ferry Avennue and Broadway. PATCO officials have estimated that they will be able to move roughly 10,000 people per hour to their station at 9/10th & Locust in Center City. However, they’ve only sold 13,000 of their special one-day Papal Freedom Cards. Passenger will also be able to use their ordinary Freedom cards to ride the trains, but PATCO officials wanted to make sure that anyone who wanted to go see the pope gets a chance to. For pilgrims who might be waiting until the last minute to decide to take the train into Philadelphia, PATCO announced they will be selling tickets at the stations on the days of the papal events.

New Jersey Transit, Amtrak, and regional bus services such as Bolt and Megabus are pretty much sold out.