Smart Highway - A Dutch Road Illuminated With Solar Power

By Dan Howarth: The first glow-in-the-dark road of Daan Roosegaarde's Smart Highway project has opened in Oss, the Netherlands. Glowing Lines uses photo-luminescent paint to mark out the edges of the road, and is the first of five concepts to be realised from Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde's Smart Highway project – designed to make highways safer while saving money and energy.


Developed with infrastructure firm Heijmans, the paint absorbs solar energy during the day then illuminates at night.

"Here the landscape becomes an experience of light and information," said Studio Roosegaarde in a statement. "As a result this increases visibility and safety."

The lines are now installed along the N329 route in Oss for an initiative called Road of the Future. Three glowing green lines run along each side of the dual carriageway and illuminate every night.
Rooegaarde described driving along the section of road at night as "going through a fairy tale".

The project was first announced at Dutch Design Week 2012, and has since undergone a series of tests to gauge durability and user experience.
It was presented by Roosegaarde at the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town in 2013 and received an INDEX: Award later the same year.

Next month, the designer aims to launch the next stage in the project – a light-emitting bicycle path designed as a contemporary interpretation of Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh's painting Starry Night.

This will form part of the historic Van Gogh route in Nuenen, where the post-impressionist painter once lived and worked, to give cyclists the opportunity to experience a modern version of this painting in an innovative landscape of light.

Roosegaarde's other Smart Highway proposals include temperature-reactive paints that will indicate to drivers when roads are icy, interactive street lamps that come on as vehicles approach then dim as they pass by and "wind lights" powered by the air from passing vehicles.

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