Here is a link to WCC's freight route network map [on PDF] showing the A350 as a strategic lorry route...!

It is in fact a thoroughly bad road for a long-distance lorry driver.  Only short sections are really viable.

Most of the A350 is narrow, twisting, with poor visibility, subject to traffic lights, locally congested, etc.

It will be observed that the A350 'strategic route' presently stops at the A303...!  The A350 at Shaftesbury and nearly to Blandford, about ten miles of tight twisty road, is useless for HGVs.  If following the WCC map, the HGV driver intending to get to the South Coast has to go through Salisbury, a choked-up heritage city.

It can be seen that the A350 'strategic route' is actually limited and is not the best way across Wiltshire.

Start/stop driving is also wasteful of fuel.  It is better to go a rather longer distance at a constant speed.

The proper way for HGVs from the north to the south of Wiltshire (and around this area of the South-West) is via the M4, A34, M3 & M27, which are all top class roads.

This was a recommendation of the Bristol/Bath to South Coast Study.   The A350 was to be avoided.

This recommendation (not an A350 bypass) was endorsed by the South West Regional Assembly, in 2004.

WCC's Director of Environmental Services conceded to implementing new signage and a new HGV route map.

But none of this has actually been done.  The map shown above is as it appears on WCC's website, in 2008.

Wiltshire County Council is not the only body dragging its feet over a simple matter of better management. When the 'strategic route' is unsuitable, this in itself is a basis of a phoney case for upgrading the road.

The Wiltshire County Council Structure Plan claims that 'the A350 north/south acts as a route of regional and national importance for longer distance traffic between the Bournemouth/Poole area and Wales and the North and because of its strategic importance the route will be improved...', but does not mention that the A350 is actually fundamentaly unsuitable as a north/south HGV route of any strategic importance because of inherent severe constrictions of the natural terrain in a long section of the southern part of the A350.

I suppose that WCC wants lots of lorries on the A350 to inflate its case for its Westbury bypass scheme.