Westbury Bypass - Wiltshire A350 - Information    
  ... where the facts are ...    ... what they will not tell you ...  

Read the latest information.  Wiltshire Council's Eastern Westbury Bypass web-site, by the council's road-building partners, hyping the counter-productive would-be eastern bypass development, is old news.  Their last puffed-up but short-lived triumph was W(C)C's regulatory meeting of May 2007.  W(C)C told us (and put it on its website) that its scheme was approved.  Really? After spending £4.5M on the project, it went pear-shaped for never-ready Wiltshire Council & Partners at the Planning Inquiry.

Front Page
The Wrong Way
Verdant Valley
Odd Objective
Spiralling Cost
Business Case
No to Funding
Barmy Bypass Bad for BA13
Pollution Risk
Threat to Best of Countryside
Walk the Route
Land Ownership
Cement Works
Wildlife Loss
Why East...?
Choked Town
Ignored Report
West Solutions for Westbury
Our Railway
Parkway
Activity
Failure...
Freightway
Forty Acres
Inquiry Links
Further Links
Web-site...?

Read all about it here on our A350 Westbury Bypass independent information website.

Planning Inspector rules against the scheme, which is now turned down.

View Wiltshire Council's would-be highway through the heart of the country.

Which could have been even worse with ugly secret gantries on embankments.

Latest News:  Wiltshire Council has another agenda of road-linked development.

Yet a western route alongside the railway tracks, to the station, road-rail freight terminal and trading estates, is shorter than the failed eastern bypass scheme. It would be of significantly less cost.   It would not be expensively contending with environmental difficulties.    It would be a solution for the 21st century.

Westbury main-line railway station desperately needs a decent access road.

Strange weight restriction:  Who still wants to make HGVs go the extra mile...?

Wiltshire Council's unsound eastern project was called in for a Planning Inquiry, which recommended refusal of planning permission.    The scheme's rejection was endorsed by the Government.   The dud eastern road project is now dead.

Government letters ordered a full public inquiry into the W(C)C eastern route, which, as said in the GOSW letter, was in potential conflict with many policies.

Wiltshire (County) Council failed in its attempt at a pre-emptive rush inquiry.

Wiltshire Council's myopic out-dated A350 road-building plan was not in any transport priorities proposed in the Regional Strategy or by the Government.

A reasonable way forward will be to properly consider worthwhile solutions.

The W(C)C Far Western route  is of similar length to W(C)C's Eastern scheme.
Any extra length was for a bypass of the longest A350 tailbacks at Yarnbrook.

If road-to-rail freight interchange at the Westbury railway hub was developed, for obvious environmental advantages, HGV congestion would be cut anyway.

This web-site reflects the genuine local opinion about a solution at Westbury.
In the last survey ever conducted by Wiltshire (County) Council, up to 79% of Westbury area residents with a view were opposed to the eastern route.     As few as 21% were in favour of the so-called 'preferred' eastern bypass scheme. Read our summarised factual analysis of the Westbury Bypass Opinion Survey.
Overwhelmingly, 75% of the local public response wanted a western solution.

Who would have honestly wanted an A350 HGV highway to be here...?

This is a view of where the unpopular eastern road was actually routed.

The planning application was 2400 obscure pages.  But one futile council.

Here are some simulated panoramas of the defunct rural highway project.

A road through our finest areas would have spoiled walking and horse-riding.

The failed eastern bypass scheme was inept gambling, now a complete waste.

This was at a time when rational solutions for West Wiltshire are really required.

Most of the responses to the 2005 'consultation' were objections to the scheme.

Most of the responses to the 2007 'consultation' were objections to the scheme.

Unproved environmental mitigation ideas, which were pieced together to go with the opportunist planning applications, have turned out to be counter-productive.

Far worse tail-backs than in Westbury at adjacent Yarnbrook were being ignored.

It is worth pointing out that little has been done to re-direct long distance lorries to/from the M4 by other than the A350 - as approved BBSCS recommendations.

Wiltshire's HGV map still portrays the unsuitable A350 as a strategic lorry route, which directs HGVs through towns & villages, against reality and agreed policy.

Route flows show how the eastern Westbury bypass plan would have imposed yet more HGVs on to other communities which already suffer twice as many.

Why not follow a sustainable solution of an integrated western access road alongside the railway, routed directly to the station and industrial area...?

Ludicrously, rail freight integration is a council policy!    See 'Freightway'
(and observe the contradiction between Wiltshire freight policy and what the council does).

'Novel road plans to put nature first'  - an amazingly incredible claim.

Nature as it is was seen on our 2007 walk along the eastern route.

Please continue to help us to save the valley from the builders.

Thank you for supporting our fund-raising against the folly.

Please contribute to the WHA's successful campaign.

Celebrate saying goodbye to a failed eastern era.

An all wrong road scheme which had a ridiculous way to go.

A new old poem about Wiltshire Council and the Wellhead Valley.


updated: 14 January 2010                    Foolish harm, worse journeys, neglected railways...    next page >>