Curious & Counter-Productive Sequence of Omission

In 2001, Wiltshire County Council chose a scheme of an Eastern Westbury Bypass combined with Northern (on the Trowbridge side) Bypasses of nearby Yarnbrook and West Ashton, on the same poorly-suited A350.

But an Eastern Westbury Bypass would not have worked with a Northern Bypass around Yarnbrook, because the A350 traffic would still go through the bottleneck of the Yarnbrook village cross-roads/mini-roundabout.

Wiltshire County Council's consultants at the time discreetly acknowledged this rather fundamental failing.

WCC's Far Western route around Westbury would work well with the preferred Northern Yarnbrook Bypass.
It is on the correct alignment and would provide a genuine bypass around the Yarnbrook A350 bottleneck.

In 2003, traffic relief for Yarnbrook and West Ashton, which have the worst vehicle congestion on the A350 - in Wiltshire - far worse than Westbury - was illogically omitted from Wiltshire County Council's road scheme.

An Eastern Westbury Bypass would have had a bad effect of severely worsening the already worst congestion at Yarnbrook and West Ashton, plus at North Bradley, Southwick, Rode and Melksham too, because it would have pushed more heavy traffic, especially more heavy goods vehicles, onto these other local communities.

The Eastern Westbury Bypass project had little value, other than to develop the Special Landscape Area.


return to Barmy Bypass page >>