Wednesday, November 21, 2012

The Netherlands Consider Heated Bike Lanes For Winter Riding

Apparently the Netherlands has money coming out its ears, because they're considering installing heated bike lanes for winter bicycle riding. At a cost of about  $25 - 50,000 per kilometer. Cool? Definitely. That sarcasm you detect from me is just jealousy.

Dutch authorities think the move may be a way to get more people to ride bikes in the winter and less to drive, which cuts down on costs from accidents and de-icing."Treehugger" has the story.

4 comments:

Charles said...

When I was going to WSU, I lived in the University Trailer court down the hill from the campus. I walked along the road to the street by the electric generating plant and then up the hill to my classes. They used the waste heat from generating electricity to heat the buildings on campus and the steam lines ran in a vault under the sidewalk so no matter how deep the snow was on the road the sidewalk was always melted off.

SRTC Staff said...

That's awesome! It's too bad it would take a major overhaul to our infrastructure to make that happen in certain areas now.

vanillajane said...

Check this out. It's how you heat the streets without having to pay for the energy.

Plus I've heard if all the roads were converted to these we wouldn't need any more dams, coal fired generator plants, or windmills because we would have miles and miles of solar panels.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/01/19/smart.roads/index.html

SRTC Staff said...

I saw an interview on the local news with this guy a while back. So cool that it's being created in our own backyard. Maybe we can get this kind of technology before the rest of the country with him being a 'neighbor' and all.


About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.