Forget Street Lights, There's A Glow-In-The-Dark Road In The Netherlands

"It looks like you are driving through a fairytale."

Street lighting in a 500m-length of highway in the Netherlands has been replaced by glow-in-the-dark road markings.

Studio Roosegaarde / Via studioroosegaarde.net

The aim is to create more sustainable infrastructure that automatically adapts to the traffic and environment. The 500m stretch is Studio Roosegaarde's first project for the road markings but it hopes to expand to new projects, according to Dutch News.

Photo-luminescent powder was integrated into the road paint, reports Wired.co.uk. This has created an "almost radioactive" colour, according to lead designer Daan Roosegaarde.

Maxime Verhagen @MaximeVerhagen

Een laatste blik op een pracht innovatie

07:38 PM - 10 Apr 2014

"It looks like you are driving through a fairytale," according to a report by NOS, a broadcasting organisation based in Netherlands.

But there are still reasons to be wary of the new system. First, no-one's quite sure on how the paint will hold up against wear-and-tear and secondly, the paint is only able to glow for eight hours even after being charged for a full day.

Studio Roosegaarde / Via studioroosegaarde.net

Studio Roosegaarde hopes that its technology develops enough to adapt to the environment. A snowdrop may appear on the road surface, for example, if it was snowing.

Studio Roosegaarde / Via studioroosegaarde.net

Roosegaarde, who also founded the studio, said he took inspiration from the seaworld.

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He told Reuters: "What you see now is there there is an incredible amount of hardware needed to have something very immaterial, which is light.

"So these gigantic street lamps and cables and wires and maintenance and I was always amazed by that. I'm like, why can't we look at how jellyfishes behave, deep deep underwater they have their own light."

Roosegaarde has previously complained of being held back due to bureaucracy.

Studio Roosegaarde / Via studioroosegaarde.net

Although the glow-in-the-dark highway system was completed months earlier, the studio had been held back by having to wait for a license from the local authority, he told Wired.co.uk in October.

Studio Roosegaarde / Via studioroosegaarde.net