“It could be five minutes, ten minutes, sometimes like a half hour, it varies,” said Payne.

Payne says she still times her walk to the bus stop according to the schedule, even though it’s off so often. Unless she can catch a ride with a friend or chooses to call a cab, those two buses are her only way to work. Payne transfers to the Route 9 from the Route 32 on her way to work at Roxborough Memorial Hospital and then takes the reverse trip home.

“It’s horrible,” said regular Route 9 rider Cindy Payne from her window seat. That performance made the Route 9 2017’s least on-time route - excluding Route 80, a seldom-running route that was running on a detour to avoid a weight-restricted bridge. The bus arrived on-time just 60 percent of the time in 2017, 63 percent in 2016, 73 percent in 2015, and 65 percent in 2014. The only thing consistent about it is inconsistency. While other lines’ performance can swing up or down in a given year due to construction or long-term detours, the Route 9 remains regularly late.

Year in and year out, the Route 9 bus has delivered among the worst, if not the worst, on-time performance out of all of SEPTA’s routes. Out of those 184 different lines, Route 9 is arguably the worst. SEPTA runs 111 city bus routes, including 38 special bus routes for school children, 41 suburban bus routes, 13 Regional Rail lines, eight streetcar lines, five contracted-out shuttles, three trackless trolley routes, two subways, and one high speed line.

Septa detours