Poland's New Solar-Powered Bike Path Glows Bright Blue at Night

Wintry weather may be on the way, but Poland's bike paths will be brighter than ever before. That’s because the country has just rolled out a 330-foot strip of road illuminated at night by phosphor, a synthetic material that lights up after it’s charged by sunlight. The eye-catching blue road, created by construction company TPA Instytut Badan Technicznych in Pruszkow, is still in the test phase. Yet the contractors aren’t the first to unveil a solar-powered bike path. Two years ago, on the 125th anniversary of Vincent van Gogh’s death, the Dutch town of Eindhoven built a twinkling 1,970-foot path that evokes the artist’s famous swirls in the painting Starry Night.

While the Dutch path lights up through solar-powered LEDs on cloudy days, the Polish version requires no additional power supply. This means that pedestrians in Pruszkow can stroll along a lit pathway for up to ten hours at night and ride over the same path the next day as it self-charges.

Although the blue path is beautiful and safer than a traditional roadway, it is significantly more expensive (the company has yet to reveal figures), which is why the current iteration doesn't cover much ground. The contractors are researching various options to optimize production costs so that the technology can more easily spread to other locations.