Starting this weekend, people will cycle over about six hundred solar panels on the cycle path next to the N232 near Vijfhuizen. The province is therefore preparing for a re-examination after a similar ‘solar road’ broke beyond repair within a week in 2019.
The solar cycle path – NH News
An important difference from four years ago is that the road surface, which cost a million euros to build, was used by heavy traffic. This is not the case with the more than five hundred meters of cycle path at Vijfhuizen, the province previously told NH.
Now Jeroen Olthof, deputy for the province of North Holland, emphasizes that important lessons have been learned from that trial: “It was then, just like now, a pilot project. Of course, you always hope that something like this will go well the first time. But teething problems come along. and you have to deal with that. Partly because of this, we now have every confidence that this cycle path will last for a long time.”
Grains for grip
You may think that it is much less efficient to cover a cycle path with solar panels than, for example, a meadow, but the deputy states that that is not the case: “As a province, we manage hundreds of kilometers of cycle path. It is therefore up to us to see how we can use those kilometers as usefully as possible. Sustainability fits in very well with this.”
Apparently solar panels are not the safest surfaces to ride over with a bicycle, especially now that frost and therefore slippery roads are approaching again. This was taken into account during construction. Coarse grains are mixed through the transparent layer that lies on top of the panels and thus forms the road surface, which should ensure that the road surface is just as safe as any other cycle path.
“Intuitively it seems like a big slippery slope”
On Saturday morning, the first day that the cycle path is in use, it is still very quiet along the N-road. A lady who is riding the cycle path for the first time is positive about it: “When I rode on it, I thought for a moment ‘oh, if only it goes well’, because emotionally it seems like a big slippery mess. That’s certainly not the case now. The case is still not too bad. Whether that will still be the case later in the year remains to be seen, but they must have thought about it.”
After Friday’s rain, the cycle path appears at first glance to be a kind of mirror, but in our own cycling test it appears that the granules incorporated into the road surface are doing their job. The bicycle also retains its grip during an emergency stop. A successful rain test, now we have to brave the night frost.
In the meantime, Deputy Olthof is already looking ahead: “If this cycle path is a success, and we assume so, I hope that we can roll out this idea to other cycle paths in the province, and ultimately throughout the Netherlands.”