Residents along the old loop noticed the change before the official poster went up: buses that used to turn at the market car park now continue along a newly opened estate road to a sheltered interchange. The operator published a service update on Wednesday. We walked both routes with a stopwatch and a printed map from the notice board.
The new road cuts roughly four minutes off the through journey for through-riders, but adds six minutes for people whose nearest stop moved two blocks. That trade-off is the story. Network slogans about “improved connectivity” do not tell a parent with a stroller whether their stop still exists.
We list every stop added and removed as printed in the operator PDF. If a stop is “temporarily skipped”, we say temporary and we note whether a date is given. Permanent changes get a bold label so readers scanning on a phone do not confuse them.
School-gate traffic on the new road picked up on day one. Neighbourhoods desk colleagues counted crossing times at peak hour; transport desk owns the bus numbers. Shared files cross-link so you do not read conflicting times on two pages.
Cycling paths beside the new road were not fully open when buses started using the carriageway. A barricade forced cyclists onto a footpath that is technically too narrow for mixed use. We photographed the barricade from a public footpath; we did not enter a construction zone.
Corrections welcome with the service number and a photo of the notice if you have one. We update stories when operators revise PDFs, not when a chat group speculates.