Philly rail tickets nearly sold out for Eagles celebration

PHILADELPHIA — If you don't have tickets to ride the train from New Jersey to Thursday's Eagles championship celebration you may be out of luck.

The parade steps off 11 a.m. on Broad Street and Pattinson Avenue in South Philadelphia and heads north to City Hall. A ceremony follows at the Museum of Art. At least 2 million people are expected to attend, twice as many who celebrated the Phillies World Championship in 2008.

PATCO, which will run one-way service into Philadelphia from South Jersey, has had "extremely brisk" advance ticket sales for Thursday, according to spokesman Kyle Anderson. He urged riders to arrive at their station as early as possible and said that having a ticket does not guarantee service.

Ticket sales will be suspended at 7 p.m. on Wednesday and will not be sold on Thursday. Sales could be suspended earlier based on sales Wednesday afternoon.

"We want to make sure that as many people who buy tickets are able to get on and make sure we manage expectations,"  Anderson said

The trains will stop at Lindenwold,  Woodcrest, Ferry Avenue and the Broadway stations before heading into the city.

SEPTA is running limited regional rail service into the city on Thursday with six early-morning trains from West Trenton to the Jefferson station and three from Trenton to the 30th Street station before 7 a.m.

Nearly 50,000 SEPTA tickets are sold out along with an additional 4,000 tickets went on sale Wednesday morning at the Cornwell, Media, Doylestown, Lansdale, Langhorne, Chestnut Hill East, Fox Chase and Philmore stations.

SEPTA buses are still an option from stations along the West Trenton Line and will be running from the Neshaminy, Trevose, Somerton, Forest Hills and Bethayres stations to the Frankford Transportation Center. From there, riders can catch free service on the Market-Frankford Line.

On the Trenton line, bus service will be available from Levittown, Bristol, Eddington, Torresdale, Holmesburg Junction, Tacony, Bridesburg and North Philadelphia to the Market-Frankford Line.

NJ Transit is adding an extra train in the morning and afternoon on the Atlantic City Line and increasing service on the River Line into the Walter Rand Transportation Center in Camden, which connects to PATCO.

Due to the high number of tickets already sold in advance of the Eagles Parade, NJ Transit discontinued sales of tickets to all points between Atlantic City and 30th Street Philadelphia, including all intermediate stations, on Wednesday.

Customers traveling on the Atlantic City Line on Thursday will need a pre-purchased ticket to travel for the entire service day.

Customers traveling on the ACRL on Wednesday, February 7th, can purchase their tickets onboard without penalty.

"Customers need to plan their trip based on the service that's being offered. It's going to be crowded and safety is our number one priority. We will have personnel monitoring customers boarding the trains...we will not let the trains be crowded for safety reasons," adding that riders will have to wait for the next train once it reaches capacity, spokeswoman Nancy Snyder said.

Are you going to the parade? Send photos and video from the celebration to reporter Dan Alexander at Dan.Alexander@townsquaremedia.com or via Twitter @DanAlexanderNJ