A LOOK back through economic history soon reveals the important role transport plays in creating and maintaining prosperity.

In the Eighteenth century towns on important stage coach routes prospered while the coming of the canals later in that century helped provide a great economic stimulus until they were largely superseded by the railways.

In post-war years the private car and the lorry have taken over the job of providing the solution to our transport needs.
Throughout all these phases of our modern industrial development the issue of transport has been Warminster’s Achilles heel.
No stage coaches of note, no canal, no motorway, a branch line railway and in the A36, a trunk road that fails to live up to its billing, have all meant that Warminster has always had to fight an uphill struggle to attract enterprise because of its relatively poor communications.
We cannot undo the past but what we must do is make best use of the assets and attributes that we have at present – and clearly we are not doing this.
We need to make significant changes to transport to allow us cope with the changing needs of the economy, society and demography.
Railways
We need to campaign for better services especially in the early morning and ideally provide a direct early morning link with the capital that gets into Waterloo before 8.15pm. The existing so-called direct service is poorly timed, except for tourists, and is not really direct as it simply waits at Salisbury until the up train from Exeter arrives and latches together with it.
It means the service is hardly any better than one that involves a change. This wasn’t the case when the direct service was first introduced as it didn’t even stop in Salisbury.
It is no surprise that our local MP, who used to live in Warminster, moved to Mere to be within striking distance of the direct Waterloo to Gillingham service.
We also need to pressure First Great Western to up its game and restore some of the evening commuting services that were withdrawn when they replaced the somewhat superior Wessex Trains.
There’s also the question of first class travel. When the current class of ‘smartie tube’ type trains took over from the old locomotive hauled services in 1991 it meant the end of first class rail travel through Warminster.
Its removal has meant that people used to this class of travel, or at least a serious proportion of them, no longer travel on trains through Warminster. That can’t be a good thing as very often these first class travellers are influential people and you should want them to have as much contact with your town as possible.
We also need to press for a better service linking Warminster to Swindon via Melksham and Chippenham. The lines are there so why not use them more than twice a day?

The train operators need to be forced to carefully consider the number of carriages they allocate to their services particularly on 'special' days.

Major football and rugby matches at places like Southampton FC and Portsmouth FC and Bath RFC as well as big sporting events at the national stadium in Cardiff all make for very crowded services for families on a shopping day out.
Buses & Coaches
Buses present a mixed picture. Over the past generation there has been a huge change in bus usage with some positive steps and others less so.
On the positive side there is a significantly better service around the town than in the past although some of the buses are fairly basic and cannot accept wheelchairs. This will no doubt improve over time as bus providers struggle to cope with disability rights legislation. We should perhaps offer to help in some small way. We should also improve the lot of those who wait for buses on the estates by installing more bus shelters.
We don’t want to see bus services withdrawn.
Sadly this is what happened last year when Wilts and Dorset, a company with a history dating back to 1915 and which had run buses from Warminster to Salisbury since the mid 1920s pulled out of the town.
They were running state of the art Mercedes buses and their withdrawal was bad news – it also meant that Warminster was cut off from the Wilts and Dorset busabout ticket network.
The over 60s, of course, enjoy their free bus passes but we feel these should be useable before 9am especially for those who might want to use them to get to work.
We also feel there is scope for better integration between the buses and the train station. Pictured: Warminster's last ever Wilts and Dorset bus.

 

Taxis and mini-buses provide an important and in some cases vital link for some with their door to door service.

Currently, there is a pilot scheme in Warminster which started in January 2009 using a wheelchair accessible mini-bus loaned by Community First under the auspices of Warminster Community Transport.

This adds to the variety of options available like hospital cars and the Link organisation that complement the commercially run transport services.

The new unitary authority should accept as one its first priorities the need to make their work in assisting both the young and old to get about as convenient and practical as possible.

Careful consideration needs to be made about access to safe picking up and dropping points at popular points and peak times.

The district council has operated a voucher scheme for the elderly to use in hiring the services of a taxi or paying for a bus ticket. These should be continued.

Taxi drivers can get a bad press but they should be consulted and listened to in order to achieve as wide a choice of safe public transport options.