Bathrooms. It always begins and ends with bathrooms.

A SEPTA bus route, that is—they all must have a bathroom at the end of the route for drivers to use during their short breaks between runs. So explained Anita Davidson, a SEPTA operations planner, when asked at Tuesday’s open house on the new bus Route 49 why the proposed route couldn’t make more of a loop in Gray’s Ferry.

That could work, Davidson explained patiently, if the bus made such a loop mid-route, but not towards the end, where SEPTA needs a good spot in the urban jungle for when nature calls. Bathrooms that are open during the route’s 5 a.m. to 2 a.m. schedule are rare commodities, and they constrain options.

With Route 49, SEPTA proposes to offer one-seat rides through University City from Brewerytown and Fairmount in the north, to Grays Ferry and Point Breeze in the south. Right now, transit riders need to transfer or walk to get across the Schuylkill River to Philadelphia’s second largest employment hub. SEPTA anticipates the new route will begin running sometime this fall or early next spring. Tuesday’s open house was aimed at getting more community feedback on the bus’s specific route.

The buses will run every 15 minutes during rush hour and 20 minutes off-peak during the week. On the weekends, buses will run every 20-30 minutes.