Snow makes Route 23 a long and winding road

It's the longest city bus route in America, SEPTA boasts, and for the last week, it has been even longer.

Snow-related detours remained in effect yesterday on SEPTA's Route 23, elongating the rambling 14-mile run from the top of Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill to Oregon Avenue in South Philadelphia with three short jogs.

Although detours came and went throughout the day as front-end loaders bit into snowbanks to open impassable streets, there were still about 130 detours on 58 bus lines across the city and inner suburbs yesterday. In most cases, the cause was listed on SEPTA's Web site as "icy conditions."

Weather-weary passengers seemed more numb than angry about delays of 30 minutes or more.

"How are you?" Route 23 driver Mark Robinson asked one woman as she boarded on Broad Street near the southern terminus.

"All right, I guess," she said, stamping fresh snow from her boots. "Who the hell knows?"

Robinson, 51, a SEPTA driver since 2005, said the combination of packed ice on roadbeds and cars parked at crazy angles was among the hazards he had to avoid.

About 9 a.m., he was beginning his second round-trip run of the day. He pointed his empty bus south on Germantown Avenue near Bethlehem Pike in Chestnut Hill. Within 15 minutes, he had 30 passengers, and the video screen above his seat was chirping an alert from SEPTA.

"They just shot this detour in there," he said, reading from the screen. "Right on Broad, left on Tioga," then back to the usual path on Germantown. He shouted the changes to the passengers.

Looking ahead, Robinson could see the reason for the detour: snow clearing on Germantown between Erie Avenue and Venango Street.

He said most passengers were understanding but some bristled.

"I've got to walk a whole city block?" he said, mimicking the complainers. "Believe it or not, some people get agitated behind that."

Between slow-moving traffic and the first detour, the 23 bus was only 40 minutes into the run and already was 14 minutes behind schedule. In good weather, a one-way run takes 90 minutes. At the height of the storm last week, it averaged nearly twice that, according to SEPTA.

Travel times could be even worse without the detours, Robinson said. "It's very important that they send us these detours, because if you don't get the detour, you run right into the mess."

The second detour came a few minutes later.

"I'm taking Susquehanna Avenue down to Broad, making a left, then coming back in on Jefferson," he announced. Ordinarily he would have turned onto 12th Street at Susquehanna, but a badly parked car blocked the way.

Joan Quann, a retired teacher of French, is a docent at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, on Broad Street about two blocks north of City Hall. She typically boards the 23 near Wayne Junction and gives herself an hour to get to work, she said.

Yesterday, to be on the safe side, Quann allowed herself two hours - and needed it.

At 10:30, 90 minutes into the run and 30 minutes behind schedule, the bus picked up passengers at 12th and Locust Streets. Among them were Nicole Galli and her 17-month-old daughter, Valentina.

Galli said she wanted to take her daughter out in a stroller before an afternoon nap, but the badly shoveled sidewalks of Center City made that impossible.

"We tried to go to Whole Foods on South Street yesterday," she said, "and we had to turn back."

Valentina is learning to talk, and bus is a word she recognizes and likes to say. So it seemed only natural that mother and child would cruise to nowhere for an hour yesterday in a pre-nap buscapade.

"This is a bus," the toddler said, growing sleepy as the 23 made its third and final detour - right from 12th onto Lombard, left from Lombard onto Broad toward Oregon.

Minutes later, she and her mother were the only passengers as the bus hung a U-turn on Broad on its long return trip north.