Open-roof, double-decker tour buses have become a staple in the Big Apple. Each year thousands of visitors arriving on flights to New York City are treated to birds-eye-tours of Manhattan on the funky vehicles.

And those tours are often narrated by spirited and dedicated tour guides who eat, sleep, and breathe NYC. Now many of those guides fear a new law will leave them out of a job.

According to a report in today’s Metro, the new law would require at least 40% of tour buses to be equipped with headphones in 2012. The headphones would cut down on noise pollution created by the tour guides, who often address tourists with the aide of megaphones or speaker systems.

So what’s the problem? Many guides think the high cost of installing headphones will lead tour companies to switch over to automated  audio tours fed directly into the headsets.

While their fears may be well-founded, no official decision has been made just yet by New York's major tour companies.       

CC Flickr photo credit: Elvert Barnes