A leading councillor yesterday called for urgent action to improve conditions on one of the West's busiest trunk roads which he has branded a traffic clogged death-trap.

Salisbury council member David Parker said it was time the Government dualled the A303 "holiday route" through the West which is used by nearly 30,000 vehicles a day.

Despite an almost constant stream of "motorway volume" traffic including hundreds of heavy goods vehicles some stretches of road remain single-carriageway.

This helps create horrendous jams, dangerous conditions and leads to frustrated drivers seeking alternative routes on minor roads through scores of villages in Wiltshire, Somerset and Dorset.

Last month there was an outcry when the Highways Agency announced it was going to close 6km of the A303 near the Wiltshire-Dorset border for 14 weeks for repairs.

Fearing a deluge of traffic seeking to escape the resultant jams, villagers, MPs and council leaders from dozens of rural communities kicked-up a storm.

Within hours of their fears being reported in the Western Daily Press the Government scrapped the closure and is looking to carry out the works while keeping the road open.

Now the chair of Salisbury's planning and regulatory control committee said interested parties should build on this success by mounting a concerted campaign to dual the road.

Councillor Parker, who lives in Teffont, one-and-a-half miles off the A303, said: "The time is ripe to press the Government to improve those lengths of the A303 that are proving to be death traps and traffic blighted.

"We need to build a campaign to lobby government from all directions and seek vocal support from MPs, MEPs, regional development agency, regional assembly, county councils and others, and the Road Haulage Association.

"We need to gather support from all over to stop the waste in the West of this modern-day fiasco of an important highway.

"Weekends throughout the year are a nightmare on this road. On Friday evenings and Sunday evenings traffic is nose-to-tail for hours on end.

"Junctions onto the A303 are blocked, drivers are trapped and people are killed following frequent accidents.

"People stuck in these jams are stressed. The environment also suffers and costs of delays and the fuel wastage by cars in jams is totally unacceptable in this ear of climate change awareness."

A former chairman of Salisbury district council, he said the Government had promised to bring forward public works to ease unemployment and the financial downturn.

He said: "With this in mind pressure must be stepped up to get the A303 improvements included in the schedule.

"It is estimated that a dual carriageway costs £1million a mile and a fatal road accident costs £1million.

"By upgrading the A303 to dual carriageway, the Government would be actually saving money in the long run.

"It would also be improving the lives of a million or so people who live in the villages connecting to this important route west from London."

One scheme to dual 12.4 km of the A303 through Wiltshire was scrapped because it formed part of the axed project to bury 2.1 km of the road in a tunnel out of sight of Stonehenge.