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The End of The Route

Today marks the official end of the route for an iconic player of London life. The Routemaster which have been serving Londoners faithfully for so many decades and can now be found all over the world, has gone into retirement.

It had already been become a rare site on the streets of London in the past few months with decomissioning starting about a year ago. I used to hop on number 12 every to go to and back from work before the route was fitted with bendy buses (which have much fewer seats!).

Last night I witnessed part of the buses' swan song and I observed in surprise perhaps 5 or 6 routemasters of all areas on route 159 in Piccadilly Circus.

Thankfully, we will still have a chance to hope on a Routemaster from time to time as they will remain in service on Routes 9 and 15 as heritage routes for tourists.

The main reason for the decomissioning of the bus is it lack of accessibility for disabled people, which has long made me wonder why newer routemasters could not be design including accessible door and the famous and so practical open platform at the back. I am happy to say that others have had the same thought. Let's hope they are heard!

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  1. Anonymous12/09/2005 7:20 pm

    You missed that Plame is being honored today by true American Patriots like Bill Clinton in Montreal, announcing he works for his good friends PR firm stated two days ago and reminding us all of 'Brewters Millions.'

    The British are retiring the double decker bus today, They would rather have chewed off their left arm, but its as close as a foreigner can get to knighthood. It looks like the new Director of MI5 is pulling this off and its all in the allied team work!

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