Follow the blue brick road! It might not lead you to Oz, but this electrifying blue bike trail is still pretty magical.
On Sept. 23, the Polish town of Lidzbark Warminski brought a whole new vision and perspective to the traditional bike trail. This inventive bike path gives off a hypnotizing blue glow in the dark, thanks to a special kind of asphalt. The asphalt is composed of synthetic particles called “luminophores,” designed by the European engineering company TPA sp. z o.o. The luminophores absorb sunlight during the day, then transform the trail into the electric blue hue at night. TPA explained to the Polish newspaper Gazeta Olsztyńska that the glow should last up to 10 hours.
The purpose of the glow isn’t purely aesthetic though. The hope is that it will create safer conditions for nighttime cyclists and pedestrians.
“We hope that the glowing bicycle path will help prevent bicycle and pedestrian accidents at night,” TPA president and CEO Igor Ruttmar told ABC News. “It’s a problem here in Poland, especially in the areas farther from the cities that are darker and more invisible in the night.”
The special section of trail is a new addition to a larger recreation path that leads up to a local lake. While the glow-in-the-dark path is only 328 feet long for now, the town hopes to expand the path after testing it out through the winter months.
To see more images of this incredible bike trail, check out the video below.
Hopefully it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing trails like this here at home!
[h/t: The Huffington Post]