A616 road

UK road routebox


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road= A616
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direction= East-West
start= Newark-on-Trent
destinations= Sheffield
end= Huddersfield
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ukmotorwaysmall|1
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The A616 is a road which links Newark-on-Trent to the M1 motorway at Junction 30, then reappears at Junction 35A, then goes onto Huddersfield.

Stocksbridge bypass

The bypass was opened in 1989 and is a road which links the M1 motorway at Junction 35A (and J36) to the Woodhead Pass (one of the main trans-Pennine roads from Sheffield to Manchester) bypassing the towns of Stocksbridge and Deepcar.

It has been said that the Stocksbridge bypass was originally planned to be part of the M67 motorway (see [http://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/m67_manchester_to_sheffield_motorway/ Pathetic Motorways] ). The project was originally planned as a dual carriageway but a political decision was made to downgrade it to single carriageway to save money. To save time the alignment was not changed to suit the new concept. As a result many motorists perceive it to be a dual carriageway road and the inevitable bad accidents have occurred.

The speed limit on the A616 is enforced using a sophisticated digital safety camera system called SPECS which calculates the average speed of a vehicle over the distance travelled between two cameras using automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology.

The Stocksbridge bypass has found itself in the media for a number of reasons. Firstly the high number of accidents (and deaths) occurring on the road since its opening make it (statistically) one of the region's most notorious roads. Secondly the road (or more correctly the site on which the road is constructed) is said by many to be haunted. There are reports that security staff (and even police officers) allegedly reported strange happenings and sightings during its construction.