As demonstrated on this website, we sympathise with old residents of Westbury who have experienced long-term degradation of their homes and businesses because of the increased volumes of heavy vehicle traffic since the 1960s.

This is especially disheartening as Westbury, Wilts, is a famous railway town, with its magnificent old station and a large freight yard.   Yet this is neglected, whilst much of the bulk freight is being inefficiently carried on unsuitable roads.

Here are Wiltshire Council's rail-focussed freight policies.    They are fine words.

Thought-out transport is Government policy too.   There is meant to be planning for a road to rail freight interchange facility at Westbury.   It would provide relief all round.    But the eastern bypass scheme was on the wrong side of Westbury.

You might also think that the highway authority Wiltshire Council should have implemented simple remedial measures, such as appropriate HGV restrictions in the town (rather than the road to the railway station, as WC has actually done!) and an efectual policy to reduce the unnecessary local congestion at peak hours plus signs on surrounding motorway exits to guide HGVs onto better routes.

Wiltshire Council's freight directions send long-distance HGVs through here.

Wiltshire's HGV map portrays the unsuitable A350 as a strategic lorry route which directs heavy trucks through communities where there will be no relief.

Westbury and the surrounding area were left stewing amidst Wiltshire Council's persuasion that an eastern bypass was the only way for some to be better off. 'Or else nothing' has been a repeated message from Wiltshire (County) Council.

Whilst a bypass would not be good for stores in Westbury, as shoppers with cars would more easily drive on elsewhere, it would uprate town centre house values. But many people now owning homes on the A350 route in Westbury bought them with all the HGV traffic taken into account.   Homes on Westbury's eastern edge, by contrast, were going to be seriously devalued by an adjacent new bypass, were it ever to be built, or by the planning blight that was now being created. Unlike owners of land on the route, they would probably not be reimbursed.

An integrated western road alongside (and interchanging with) the railway would solve the HGV problem, enhance town centre values and avoid losses.

Further house-building development often follows bypasses that are routed comparatively closely around the outsides of our old towns.   A bypass on the eastern side would have assisted the possibility of housing on open landscape.