The council are being very disingenuous in calling this a bus loop. A true bus loop has the benefits that someone above mentioned - it matters not how far it is to walk across the loop to change from one service to another, since, if it is really necessary, passengers with luggage or children or mobility issues can just stay on the bus a little longer, until the bus has arrived at the stop or street where their connecting service also calls at, as it makes its own way around the loop.

Stagecoach are rightly upset because it surely has to already be the case that of all the major cities with supposedly well served and efficient bus networks, expecting people with luggage or kids or mobility issues to walk from Blackett Street to Haymarket is already quite ridiculous, especially for people who perhaps already do have alternative means of travel, means that are far less environmentally and socially responsible than a good old bus. Adding a few hundred yards to that journey, and envisioning it to be through crowds apparently, all in the name of progress, surely takes the biscuit.

It wouldn't be so bad if the council had a solid track record of creating and managing pedestrianised areas in the city centre that are clean, safe and actually pleasant to walk through or even linger, but, well, they don't, do they?