Daan Roosegaarde Debuts His Solar-Powered Glowing Highway in the Netherlands

Improving innovation, This Highway Project lighted up the road for safer driving through solar-powered Glowing Lines.

Artist and designer Daan Roosegaarde and producer Heijmans Infrastructure have debuted their test drive of Smart Highways, a sustainable road system for safer driving, on a highway in Oss in the Netherlands. Roosegaarde’s design put solar-powered Glowing Lines along the edge of highway N329, providing drivers with three edge strips of green light along their drive. During the day, the lines “charge up” with solar energy, and at night they can glow for up to eight hours, illuminating the route and keeping cars safely on the road. The first test was a success, spurring the project to extend to other areas of the Netherlands.

Roosegaarde’s Smart Highway Project combines green energy with safer driving and an art installation experience. Using Dynamic Paint, Glowing Lines is the first wave of the Smart Highway Project, which Roosegaarde plans to extend to traffic lanes and road signs as a way to create a highway system that is more sustainable and interactive, and that makes for a safer driving experience.

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Produced by construction company Heijmans Infrastructure, the gorgeous Glowing Lines have been painted in three thin stripes alongside the perimeter of N329, a highway that cuts through the town of Oss. The paint absorbs solar energy all day, and illuminates at night giving drivers better visibility. Aside from indicating the sides of the road, Glowing Lines also creates a fantastical experience, turning the Dutch countryside into a twisting light installation.

The exciting Glowing Lines will enter its next phase next month, when Roosegaarde introduces a glowing bike path based on the painting Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, along the historic Van Gogh Route. He also plans to use the Smart Highway Project to introduce reactive paints that will warn drivers when roads are icy.