6000 people explode outwards from West Wiltshire to work - to Bristol, to Bath, to Swindon.  And also to Salisbury, to Chippenham, to Berkshire and Oxfordshire. Even to London.  From Bradford-on-Avon, the major destinations are Bath and Bristol. From Warminster, they're more likely to travel to Salisbury. From Melksham - to Chippehman or Swindon.  And from Trowbridge and Westbury the flows are distributed pretty evenly across the major destinations.

Does "6000 people" strike you as a high number? Well - it's actually an underestimate, all be it a year old, from before the recession that we seem to be starting to move forward from in the South West.  It's an underestimate because the figure is a NET outflow ... and there are plenty of people who flow into Trowbridge, or Melksham, or Westbury to work too. Each of those towns has major a major business / industrial sector - Bowerhill, the West Wilts Trading estate, the White Horse Business park sprint straight to mind.

So why is it that we have a near-unused railway line that could be providing mass transit from Warminster, Westbury, Trowbridge and Melksham up to Chippenham and Swindon ... with onward connections through to Oxfordshire, Berkshire and London ...