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Malaysia has used glow-in-the-dark paint on its roads instead of lights, but there’s a problem: it’s 20 times more expensive

The paint used costs around 749 Malaysian ringgits (US$1,006) per square meter, compared to 40 Malaysian ringgits (US$53.72) for traditional brands. In other words, photoluminescent paint costs around 20 times more. This high cost has led the government to reconsider its viability for wider implementation:

“The cost is too high, so we probably won’t continue with glow-in-the-dark lanes [...] We have done tests, but it didn’t satisfy the experts in the ministry,” said Ahmad Maslan, Malaysia’s deputy minister of works.