A Very Strange Day Indeed

Yesterday was one of those days.  First, some sort of post New Year brainstorm had affected several people in relation to the A303. Back on the 16th of December, Highways England had posted a Tweet on their A303 Twitter feed showing that it was quicker to leave the A303 at Countess Roundabout, travel north to the Packway, then west through Larkhill; finally turning South at Rollestone Crossroads,   over the Airnman's Cross roundabout at the entrance to the Stonehenge visitor centre before finally rejoining the A303 at Longbarrow Roundabout.

As far as we are aware, this is a very long-standing diversionary route for when the A303 comes to a standstill; particularly in the case of accidents.  It's also a fact of life that most modern and up to date SatNavs would offer this alternative, when traffic delays on the A303 exceed a certain level.

In fact, this route was the only possible route west a few days later on 23rd December, following a dreadful fatal accident.  So the reality is that Highways England was, unwittingly perhaps, doing a great service by pointing out the diversion.  Moreover, the diversion offered goes through no local villages, touching only the outskirts of Durrington and passing through the military town of Larkhill.  In particular, it goes nowhere near the village of Shrewton

What happened next was rather bizarre and surprising as BBC Wiltshire ran a story conflating the Highways England Tweet,  with the results of a traffic census run in Shrewton a couple of months earlier.  The clear thrust of this radio news item and subsequent newspaper articles was that the Highways Agency Tweet had driven traffic into and through Shrewton and other local villages - utter baloney.

Only people leaving the A303 and disregarding the Highways Agency alternative could have ended up in Shrewton - most likely these were either folks relying on out of date SatNavs or locals avoiding the A303.

So the articles have been disingenuous in the extreme and by being so have actively detracted from the real problem of rat-running in Shrewton - the need to re-engineer Rollestone Crossroads to deter the majority of those now using the B3086 west of Rollestone from doing so, and to encourage them to follow the route shown above.  Traffic calming measures into Shrewton on the B3086 are also desperately needed.  Now that really would reduce rat running in local villages and these measiures are needed NOW.  If only Wiltshire Council would de-digitate!

Second, after all this idiocy we did get a bit of real news at a STAG meeting yesterday evening.  The A303 consultation is about to begin.