A303 - Highway To The Sun!

A book I am drawn to read right now, written in 2012 by Tom Fort, a journalist who worked for the BBC for 22 years.  

Tom was, and possibly still is an expert on the A303 - all 92 miles of it and is probably still affectionate towards it.   I hope he won't mind me showing a couple of pages from the Introduction of the book, written during his research and just talking to people at a service area:
  I wonder if the present A303 is still close to his heart because, as we all know, it has changed beyond all recognition, since he put pen to paper....so to speak, which was prior the closure of the A344 to accommodate the New Visitor's Centre for the WHS.   Unfortunately, the queues are now much longer than he will remember......an hour long would be the norm nowadays to take us from Beacon Hill to Longbarrow roundabout....just 6 miles!    What we would like to know, is why was the Visitor's Centre built just off Airman's Cross putting all 6000 vehicles per day, that would normally traverse the A344.... onto the A303 increasing rat running through local villages!    Why did the planners and architects get things so wrong and why don't they admit they got it wrong?   What does Mr Fort think of the way things have turned out.....especially for local people and the result of rat running, for tourists held up on their way to that Highway To The Sun, and of course there's the effect on the economy, present and future.   Had the New Visitor's Centre been - more intelligently built at Fargo Woods, the A344 could have been a direct route, as it had been, for both, visitors to the Stone Circle and now the new visitor's centre, therefore relieving the now beleaguered A303 and preventing the increase in accidents that have occurred recently, of people slowing down to view or take on the move photos of the Stone Circle.    Oh! Of course, I've just had a lapse of memory....www.english-heritage.org.uk planned it that way because they didn't want anyone to get a free view of the WHS as one could in the days of Mr Fort toing and froing and perhaps even stopping to have a picnic by the Stone Circle - for free.   EH have certainly got their wish, causing chaos around the area in the process. A quickie through the fence didn't harm anyone.   Now it's £13.90 advance booking and 2 hours out of a day! 
I'm even pretty sure, Nicholas Lezard who reviewed Highway To The Sun in the Guardian 14.05.13 just one month before the closure of the A344 will surely be eating his words....: "But the A303 has much history on its side – or to either side. Fort's account of succeeding attempts to explain Stonehenge are worth the detour, and I am inclined to agree with his suggestion that the real reason that nothing has been done about diverting the road away from the stones is not due to the intransigence of the various departments, but down to the fact that, deep down, we kind of like the arrangement of road and monument the way it is"........Well I've got news for you lads....NO WE DON'T.....not now anyway!