Bike lane in the middle of a South Korean highway is covered with solar panels

A new green bike lane has been installed in the middle of a long stretch of highway in South Korea. The bike lane is about 20 miles long and it is covered in solar panels. The highway stretches between the South Korean cities of Daejeon and Sejong and is in a region about 100 miles south of Seoul.

The bike lane has replaced the center median of a six-lane highway. The solar panels over the top of the bike lane provide some shielding of riders from the sun, which is a nice thing if you are going to ride your bike for 20 miles between the cities.

The panels also generate electricity, but exactly how much electricity they generate and exactly where that electricity is sent we don’t know. It also appears that the bike lane is surrounded by guardrails to help protect bicyclists from drivers in an accident.

I wonder how many people use the bike lane. It could be that the builders of the road simply needed a place to put their solar panels and a bike lane was a side product of the placement of the solar panels. In that instance, it really wouldn’t matter if the lane gets used.

SOURCE: Autoblog