All  about  WC's  would-be  A350  Westbury  Wilts  Bypass    
  ...  with  a  route  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  town,  in  the  wrong  area  

... Conservative Wiltshire Council's persistence with an old-fashioned rural bypass predictably ended in complete failure ...

Front Page
BS Floats in WC
Big Society: BS
Rotten to Core
Green Valley
Wrong Way
Spiralling Cost
No to Funding
Barmy Bypass Bad for BA13
Pollution Risk
Threat to Best of Countryside
Walk the Route
Land Owners
Dim on Wildlife
Cement Works
Why East...?
Choked Town
Ignored Report
West Solutions for Westbury
Our Railway
Freightway
Forty Acres
Flop at Inquiry
Further Links
Web-site...?

Here are some comments on Wiltshire Council's incredible business case.

Observations are as detailed.    One comical claim by Wiltshire Council is that 'the Westbury Eastern Bypass Scheme has received endorsement and support from regional bodies such as the South West Regional Assembly, as included in Appendix C.'    But when we look inside this Appendix C, there is only one letter, from an officer at the SWRA, which does not contain 'endorsement and support' for the Westbury Eastern Bypass scheme.     Wiltshire Council was presumably assuming or hoping that nobody would actually read what was in the appendix.

There was no valid justification for the scheme.   For a high cost, it would have been a bypass of one town which would have worsened congestion elsewhere.

Wiltshire Council’s failed Eastern Bypass project was also counter-productive, because, despite Westbury being a major railway hub, WC’s highway scheme had no public transport interface and would have increased carbon emissions.

There were in fact lots of issues with the case for an eastern Westbury bypass, where it did not actually work or where misleading information was presented.

Note the barely-acknowledged gross construction cost of £38M, which is more than what Wiltshire Council usually told us.   So at least £38M has been saved.

With planning permission refused, the business case for the bypass is history.


Why government money was never going to be provided for such a dud scheme ...    next page >>