As shown on this website, we sympathise with the older 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.    Yes, fine words.

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

Westbury Station has big railway sidings.  They need an HGV road to them.

Wiltshire (County) Council ignored the big Westbury railway hub (where the London to Plymouth and the Cardiff to Southampton main lines intersect) in its comparative cost/benefit ratio calculations for the alternative routes for a road.

WC's eastern plan avoided the railway station and public transport altogether.

Wiltshire Council missed out the Westbury International Rail Freight Terminal.

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 shops in Westbury, as those with cars would more easily drive on elsewhere, it would uprate central house values.
But many people now owning homes on the A350 route in Westbury bought them with the traffic taken into account.   Homes on Westbury's eastern edge were going to be devalued by an adjacent new bypass or the planning blight.

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.