RON Roberts' letter urging a quick decision on a bypass route for Westbury and suggesting that recently-built roads provide pleasant drives for motorists is both interesting and revealing.

It implies that the countryside is something primarily to be enjoyed through the windscreen of a car. The projection of this argument is that our appreciation of the natural beauty of the Lake District or our own Limpley Stoke Valley would be improved by driving new roads through them, a depressing prospect in my view.

Even so, it may be argued, we should accept a few blots on the landscape for the sake of the local economy. OK, the White Horse will be within the noise envelope of an eastern bypass but isn't that a price worth paying for relieving Westbury of some of its traffic, and what about the boost to local industry?

Interestingly, and against all intuition, research at Liverpool University has failed to find any positive economic benefits to local economies from roadbuilding in Britain. In fact the reverse can occur. After all, building bypasses in west Wilts will encourage people to shop at Cribbs Causeway and Swindon, to the detriment of the five towns. The locality can be supplied from distant depots, so local manufacturing jobs may go (look at Ushers brewery). And fast roads encourage people to live further from their work; so more traffic in the region as a whole.

Readers may be interested to know that in Woodstock, Oxon, where I recently lived, following a referendum the offer of a bypass was turned down. The cure was considered to be worse than the disease.

C BASTIAN

Trowbridge.