Glow-in-the-dark road markings coming to UK after Netherlands tests?

Bike lane markers that glow in the dark may be coming to the UK, if road authorities like the look of a test project in the Netherlands.

Road markings that charge during the day and glow at night have been installed on a section of the N329 near the town of Oss in the south.

The three-lined strips, dubbed Glowing Lines, use glow-in-the-dark paint treated with photo-luminizing powder that can emit light for up to 10 hours at night, reducing the need for lighting along the road.

It's the idea of designer Daan Roosegaarde and Heijmans Infrastructure, a Dutch multinational development company, who together cooked up the idea of 'Smart Highways' and launched the notion at the Dutch Design Week in 2012, reports .

Roosegaarde says travelling along a road with the Glowing Lines it as ‘going through a fairy tale’.

Here's a video that shows what they're like:

First Glowing Lines Smart Highway by Daan Roosegaarde from Studio Roosegaarde on Vimeo.

"The glowing lines are a little … Daft Punk look-alike but they are to do with safety," Roosegaarde told the BBC.

"The three lines merge into one and you feel that it guides you. With fog, you see them more than with standard light. There is much less energy used.

"There will be big projects, we have requests from China and India - these are places where you need safe roads that are disconnected from the energy grid."

The Glowing Lines technology could also be used to mark bike lanes. As a demonstration of that idea Roosegaarde and Heijmans are planning a glow-in-the-dark bike path.

Inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's masterpiece Starry Night, the 600m Van Gogh-Roosegaarde light emitting bicycle path will open on November 12, in Neunen where Van Gogh lived from 1883 to 1885.

It will use glowing stones rather than lines to create a starscape under riders' tyres.

We reported on an earlier glow-in-the-dark path project last year, in Cambridge.