A462

The A462 is a mostly urban Non Primary Route that passes through the historic eastern side of Wolverhampton and heads into the Black Country conurbation from the north.

Route

Wednesbury - Laney Green

A462 just south of New Invention Island

The route starts at the A461 in Wednesbury and does a really good impersonation of an urban B road, being poorly surfaced and poorly signposted, towards Darlaston, where it meets the A4038 at Bull Stake, a strange, totally blind, dog-leg, terribly surfaced junction. It then continues pretending to be a B road through to Willenhall, passing under the A454 Black Country Route and meeting the end of the A463 before turning sharp right at a set of traffic lights. This stretch used to be the A454, and was the A463 before that!

The road turns left at another set of lights, and heads north. Only when you get beyond the A4124 junction at New Invention Island does it throw off its B-road attitude as it weaves its way over the top of the junction between the M6 and M54. It finally ends at M6 junction 11, where it also meets the A460.

History

The route of the A462 is very similar to that first allocated in 1922, with two minor realignments and a small truncation being the entire change over time.

The first realignment occurred in the 1960s, when a small single carriageway bypass for Darlaston town centre, St. Lawrence Way, was constructed, thereby moving the A462 out of the main shopping street in the town. Further north, in the 1990s, the route was again shifted between Darlaston and Willenhall from the original route through industrial areas of The Green, Willenhall Street and The Crescent to the modern dog-leg via Midland Road, Owen Road, Bilston Lane (the former A454 and A463) and Shepwell Green before rejoining the original route at Clarke's Lane.

Finally, the route was truncated by a few yards at the northern end with the construction of M6 junction 11, to end on the roundabout rather than the original line of the A460 slightly to the north.