This £40m road scheme was axed by government in 2009 after a damning inspector’s report said its weak transport case could not justify the environmental impact of the road on the landscape near the White Horse. You can read the inquiry report and government decision letter, as well as the history of the scheme via this link.  WC has said it wants to build a Westbury bypass as soon as funds become available. An eastern bypass may well be chosen again.  See also the report on the landscape by Alan James.

 

Westbury is the key obstacle on the route of its fast road to the south coast ports. Scheme preparation for the 2007 application cost the county council about £5m.  We do not know how much it spent on a longer and more expensive variant withdrawn in 2005. That earlier scheme would have extended northwards to include what has since become the Yarnbrook-West Ashton relief road – see above.

 

HGVs in the area impact on not only Westbury but also increasingly on Rode, Southwick, North Bradley and parts of Trowbridge. This is because the A363\361  from Yarnbrook to the A36 near Rode is unsuitable for lorries yet goes through a number of residential areas.  HGV traffic on the A361 now exceeds that through Westbury itself.   T

 

The council’s transport plan for Trowbridge proposed a new section of road along the route to cater for increasing traffic from new housing allocations to the south of Trowbridge.  

 

Rail:  Westbury is a major junction on the main line from London to Penzance, the Cardiff-Portsmouth line and the Heart of Wessex line from Bristol to Weymouth. It is also a centre for freight operations, especially handling stone and ballast for the railway. 

 

Safeguarding of the site for an intermodal freight terminal was removed from the Local Plan in 2013. Proposals for building a fifth platform have been on hold for years. The station is a 20minute walk from the town centre. There is no shuttle bus. Buses approaching from the north cannot turn into the station access road. The roundabout provided to serve a new housing estate is too small to allow full-size buses to make the turn.