End of an era. Goodbye to an icon
 

As most Londoners will know, we are to sadly lose the icon of London on Friday, December 9th. The famous London Bus, the Routemaster, will be no more because it has been phased out to be replaced by a square box on wheels.

I found this site and wanted to share it, as I think it is a really good snapshot of an icon. http://www.routemasters.co.uk

The Routemaster, imho, is one of the greatest design icons of recent years and is known worldwide as the symbol of London. Friday will be a tearful day.

So the double decker buses will be no more? Oh how sad...

my condolences... :(

they have been slowly phasing them out with articulated or bendy buses.

And there goes another piece of my cultural identity... blasted Whitehall Mandarins...

I thought they were going to keep a small number running on one route... for old times sake.

It's too bad. I really liked riding in them.

There are two "heritage routes" that will run between 9am and 6pm but these each have only 5 RMs. They have, however, been re-painted in the livery of their heyday and look quite splendid. http://tfl.gov.uk/buses/ini-heritage-buses.asp

wtf is a whitehall mandarin???

actually it's not much different than the original Checker cabs that used to patrol the NYC... those went away quite some time ago.

That's sad. Kind of like if San Francisco shut down the cable cars.

Sometimes progress sucks.

I was just thinking that-- checker cabs I really missed especially if you had more than a few people with you... I miss the jump seats...

Wow! Am I glad I took my wife and daughter on one when we were in London in September, hearing this news.

A useless bureaucrat or advisor (The derived expression mandarin has a chinese root) within Whitehall (One of the London political power centres) with no real purpose other than to propose new shiny, popular PC initiatives which are either unimplementable, unworkable, break or don't do anything new, often at a very high cost. Associated with New (sic) Labour.

This is an almost perfect example of the kind of proposal they can come up with.

the SF Cable cars are historical landmark status. A shame that no one did that for the double decker buses.

well I guess I won't be going to London anytime soon now.

Wow that's saddening. :( Anyone have a link to an article about the shut down?

In other news the eiffel tower will be replaced by a new modern television mast. Even if the buses needed replacing, they should have kept the old design and simply upgraded the engines or something.