popefence

With every day that inches closer to the Pope’s visit to Philadelphia, it seems like a dozen more problems pop up. We’re still two months out, but there has been no reason for optimism yet. First we had SEPTA issues, and then a #PopeFence mini controversy, and that was just the start.

In a press conference yesterday, Mayor Nutter attempted to clear the air on the whole Pope Map thing, saying none of the maps that are floating around out there are completely accurate because it’s not even done yet.

“There has been some media speculation over the weekend regarding some maps that allegedly show a security perimeter for the visit of Pope Francis during the World Meeting of Families. I want to be very, very clear with all of you. No official security perimeter has been announced or fully and finally determined.”

Also yesterday, SEPTA was planning on making an announcement regarding the sale of the Pope Pass, after last week’s attempt to sell them went … not well. So how did yesterday’s announcement go? It didn’t:

SEPTA appeared ready Monday to announce the resumption of the sale of rail passes for Pope Francis’ visit to Philadelphia in September, but then suddenly canceled a news conference to spell out the details.

The agency canceled the announcement an hour before its 3 p.m. scheduled time.

No explanation was given and SEPTA said it would reschedule the announcement for later this weekend … Only 201 of 350,000 passes – 175,000 for each day – were sold when the operation was suspended while fixes were made.

The expected number of rail travelers has also led one Bucks County township to declare a preemptive State of Emergency. According to the AP, “Middletown Township’s board of supervisors recently voted to declare a state of emergency” for the weekend of the Pope visit. The AP continues, “The town is expecting 10,000 people to descend on its Woodbourne train station. It’s only one of five Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority platforms north of the city that will serve passengers heading to see the pope on Sept. 26-27.”

We know cars won’t be allowed within a certain border (generally “Greater Center City”) even if we don’t know the exact layout of that border. But the Bicycle Coalition has been informed that bikes will be allowed inside said border. That sound you hear is every bar/restaurant that delivers within that border calling all of their employees to see who has a bike.

With all of these people coming into the city, and hotels fully booked, the question becomes where are all the Catholics going to stay? Many people have taken to listing their homes, apartments, and extra rooms on Craigslist and AirBnB, but those aren’t the only options. One group of people from Ridgewood New Jersey will be sleeping in a room full of bugs and birds: Over 60 families are paying $120 per-person to bring their sleeping bags and set up camp in the insect and bird exhibit rooms at the Philadelphia Zoo. They plan to walk to see the Pope from there, a trek of a couple of miles. It all sounds like the start of a very specific horror movie. We’ll call it “Pope Night.”

And none of these things may affect you in any way. So you may say, why do I care? Well, if you end up within that border at all the weekend the Pope is here, something might apply to you: Toilets. On the Parkway, for the Pope’s actual, in-person appearance, the city is planning on setting up 3,600 porta-potties, which comes out to about one per 250 people, on the low side of the estimate. “Those 3,600 toilets would meet the 1:250 ratio requirements only if the crowd numbers 900,000 or less,” Billy Penn said. “The World Meeting of Families expects more than 1.5 million people to attend the papal mass on the Parkway … To have a ratio of one toilet for every 250 people if 1.5 million people come, the city would need 6,000 toilets. To reach that ratio for a crowd of 2 million, 8,000 toilets would be necessary.” And that is only with the presumed (and not guaranteed) poo alleviation assistance from local business restrooms.

The city said details will begin to be released about the Pope’s visit the week of August 3. But if this is how many problems we have with minimal info, it doesn’t look good.