Better Transport

• Chris Gillham send them a message
• Tel: 01962 867338
• ACA website

ACA began in 1993 when local people noticed that there was a clear, unspoken agenda to develop new superhighway corridors by stringing many bypass schemes together.

Each bypass scheme was being presented as an environmental measure to relieve congested towns and villages on trunk roads. But each scheme, by inducing traffic, put further pressure on communities elsewhere along the corridor that did not yet have a bypass, hence increasing the clamour for relief.

ACA developed as an umbrella alliance of groups opposed to individual schemes along the Southampton-Bristol corridor (later extended in response to roadbuilders’ change of tactics to a wider South Coast to M4 corridor). Its stated aims were to oppose any road-building option which reduced the corridor resistance to traffic growth and to seek more sensible transport alternatives. No group subscribing to the aims of ACA could propose a ‘not this route but that route’ aim.

ACA played a significant part in the rejection of the Wellow Bypass at the New Forest, the Salisbury Bypass scheme and its subsequent proxy, the Harnham Relief Road. It also helped defeat the Wylye Valley and the Codford-Heytesbury schemes. The only remaining link of significance is the Westbury Bypass. This is the current focus of campaigning.

We meet approximately every five to six weeks on Thursdays from 7:30pm

Latest News :

March 2008: The White Horse Alliance against the Westbury Bypass has won a key battle to get the public inquiry into the bypass postponed. The Government agreed with the solicitors acting for the White Horse Alliance that the inquiry start date should have been set in consultation with objectors not just at the convenience of roadbuilders Wiltshire County Council. The inquiry start date has now been postponed to 17 June 2008.