Demise Of The Double-Deckers?

Red, rickety and reliable, double-decker buses chug up and down London's streets, as familiar a fixture as Buckingham Palace and the tower of Big Ben.

But now comes "the bendy bus" - comfortable, articulated, wheelchair-accessible and single-decker - and with it renewed fears that those snub-nosed old juggernauts called Routemasters, stars of thousands of postcards, movies and holiday snapshots, may be headed for the junkyard.

Londoners have heard it all before, yet 600 of the old buses are still running, and the end may not come until 2016, the deadline for making all buses wheelchair-accessible under European Union rules.

Still, any change in London's landscape is guaranteed to arouse protest somewhere, and buses are no exception.

"Routemasters are an icon of London," said Mike Ashworth, a curator at the London Transport Museum. "They are one of the few forms of urban public transport that people feel affection for. But they are heading for 40 years old."

The Routemaster hit London's streets in the mid-1950s, replacing electric trolleys. Over the next 15 years, almost 3,000 were built, all with hop-on, hop-off platforms, and conductors to sell you a ticket once you were seated.

"There is something unique about this type of bus," said David Whiting, a 36-year-old lawyer riding a juddering No. 11 past Trafalgar Square. "On a practical level, it's the ability to get on and off at will. But it's also about the atmosphere - the smell, the suspension, the wood, everything."

The first harbinger of change came in the early 1980s, with a bigger, boxier, double-decker. Instead of a conductor and a platform in the back, passengers boarded in front and paid the driver. The howls of protest from traditionalists were long and loud.

But they stayed, and today Routemasters make up only 10 percent of the city's buses.

Critics say the old bus is too small, its seats too narrow, for an increasingly hefty population. They say its open back, steep stairs and sudden lurches make it too dangerous for these safety-conscious times.

Supporters point out that the Routemaster was a designer bus, engineered specifically for London's narrow streets. Mechanics say its durable aluminum frame and easy-to-repair components - modeled in part on the construction of World War II bombers - have helped keep it on the road for more than four decades.

"They were designed by Londoners for London," said Andrew Morgan, chairman of the Routemaster Association. "In theory, they could go on almost endlessly."

Practical passengers say a fare-collecting conductor moves a bus faster than the pay-as-you board model.

Poetic passengers wax lyrical. In The Guardian newspaper last month, Stephen Pound, a Labor Party lawmaker and former bus conductor, described "a scarlet galleon of a Routemaster emerging through the London fog."

The youngest Routemasters in London are now 35 years old, and predictions of their disappearance continually prove premature. In 1970, London Transport said they'd be gone in a decade. In 1996 it said five years, in 1999 six years.

Running for mayor two years ago, Ken Livingstone promised to keep the old buses running for as long as possible. Livingstone won, and several secondhand Routemasters were bought, refurbished and added to those already on the streets.

Last month, the first "bendy bus" took to London's streets. Newspapers reported they would replace the old double-deckers.

Not so, said London Transport, which insisted it had no intention of withdrawing the Routemasters.

Officials are exploring ways of keeping them on the road, including running Routemasters in parallel with newer buses on the same route, or maybe putting them on "heritage routes," something like San Francisco's cable cars.

Many Londoners hope they remain as more than a tourist attraction.

"It'll be a sad day if they have to go," said passenger Whiting. "Things like that give a city character, and you want to hang on to them."

By Jill Lawless