Mr Harvey argues that the bottleneck at the north edge of Chippenham should be retained because it works.

Works in this context presumably meaning it costs everyone using it a disproportionate amount of their valuable time; that it is a reminder of the corrupt process that gave rise to the road to Safeway which joins it at that point in the first place.

It is confirmation Government, far from being the agent by which we develop as an efficient nation, is there to slow everyone down.

There isn't a single feature of that stretch that contributes towards anything other than congestion.

The new road was sold to the people of Chippenham as a by-pass, not as a connector of supermarkets, not as a long way round to new housing developments, but as part of a 'strategic' north-south route through Wiltshire.

It is a route that has sucked funds from other roads in the county yet which is being reduced to a series of bottlenecks connected by stretches overseen by speed-cameras.

Mr Harvey is correct in suggesting the stretch in question should not be dualled, because what should really be done is to completely replace the road with a proper by-pass, to deal at a sensible speed with the traffic that will need to use it, without incessant truck-toppling roundabouts and other congestion-inducing devices, and free of shopping traffic.

The developments around the first roundabout (Safeway's being the second) should never have been allowed, since they etch into permanence this monument to appalling planning and add weight to my nomination of Chippenham as the least successfully by-passed town in Europe: Three attempts and three failures.

We must revise this view of the world that seems to think that we can all stop using our cars and set up spinning and weaving enterprises or knit our way to work on buses or trains.

It isn't going to happen. We may all be taxed and tolled to a standstill but buses and trains will never replace the car because they will never go where or when they need to go.

Mr Walker in the same letters page a Friend Of The Earth has unwittingly provided the evidence for this and he, unlike me, lives somewhere that has its own train service.

Now he wants it connecting to everywhere else with cycle routes. Hasn't he noticed the bits of painted road all over the place?

We have had years of stagnation in transportation development, not a single useful mile of rail or road has been built in this county.

Rail as a meaningful form of transit outside cities died with the Beeching Report 40 years ago. The few bits of new road built in the last ten years have been criminally underdesigned.

When will they stop wasting our lives and money on artists' materials like paint and cameras and start spending it on good, honest Tarmac?

Brian W Smith

Devizes