The World's First Glow-In-The-Dark Bike Path Is A Ghostly Green

At 8PM last night, cyclists in the Dutch town of Nuenen were finally able to ride on a bike path that's been in the making for months. What took so long? This particular bike path represents the product of a collaboration between a designer and a construction company who want to build smarter, more efficient roads. Like this one, which glows.

The Van Gogh-Roosegaarde bike path (Nuenen is the hometown of Van Gogh and the city commissioned the path as a tribute) is coated in light-emitting paint and embedded with small, mosaic-like LEDs that suck power from a nearby solar array. Charging all day, the path glows nearly all night. When it goes out-or when clouds prevent the array from charging-an auxiliary power can feed it light.

"I wanted to create a place that people will experience in a special way, the technical combined with experience, that's what techno-poetry means to me," says the path's designer, the Dutch artistDaan Roosegaarde. Roosegaarde worked with a infrastructure and construction company calledHeijmans on the project-it's a smaller, more whimsical version of the "smart highways" the group is working to develop around the Netherlands.

The World's First Glow-in-the-Dark Bike Path Is a Ghostly Green

It's been two years since the project got underway, so it's nice to see some of it coming to fruition, at least in the prototype phase: A few weeks ago, the group unveiled their first smart highway,which is lined with paint that absorbs light during the day and emits it at night. [Colossal]