Poland Builds a Solar-Powered Bike Path That Glows Blue At Night (techcrunch.com)

Poland recently unveiled a new solar-powered bike path in the town of Pruszkow that is built with "light-emitting material" that gets its power from the sun. While the bike path has the potential to glow multiple different colors, the path in Prusczkow glows a cool blue for up to 10 hours in the dark. TechCrunch reports: The company that made it, TPA sp. z o.o, is an engineering firm focused on future tech. They expect this sort of road to be useful in larger projects -- highways, say -- but for now they're limiting it to bike paths until they can test the material in the wild. They said that this type of path may be installed in Warsaw soon and that it can glow multiple colors. The lane uses luminophores -- chemicals that "ingest" light -- to keep the bike path nicely lit at night. They chose blue to "match the Mazurian landscape" where lakes abound. You can read a bit more at Gazeta Wyborcza if your Polish isn't too rusty or you can just bask in the cold beauty of a glowing bike lane in deepest Poland.

Comments

Glow in the dark

[GuB-42]

Well, that's a very convoluted way of saying they covered the path with glow-in-the-dark paint.

Re:Glow in the dark

[TheRaven64]

It depends. A pale blue might make things more dangerous - it takes a lot less blue light to destroy your night vision than it takes to see usefully.

Re:Glow in the dark

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Dude glow in the dark paint only lasts like five minutes. This lasts for ten hours.

Re:More blue light?

[Fly Swatter]

Are you worried about trying to not fall asleep while biking ?

Maybe this is the solution.

Already claims its first victim (READ TFA)

[Provocateur]

You have to read the linked article; the same kewl blue was used to make the first chalk outline where the body was found by homicide cops.

If there will ever be that rare instance when you actually read a slashdot article, NOW is the time.

Re:More blue light?

[TooManyNames]

This is basically a durable glow-in-the-dark paint, not a bunch of LEDs. If you look at that first photo from the article (where the path appears to glow somewhat brightly), you'll noticed that it was taken with a bit of a long exposure (also why the sunset seems so bright). While I'm sure the paths will be quite visible at night, I hardly think that they'll approach anywhere near the magnitude of LEDs. In other words, I highly doubt that this will have much of an impact on the populace's nighttime response, though it'll probably confuse some insects or something.