The Singing Road – Innovation Lessons From A Melodic Misstep

In 2018 decided the province of Friesland, in the context of 'Leeuwarden, European Capital of Culture', to create a unique road that would not only be functional, but would also make an artistic contribution to road safety: the Singing Road. This innovative idea emerged from a competition within the province, in which employees were challenged to come up with creative proposals. The winning idea was inspired by a similar project in the United States and proposed playing the Frisian national anthem when motorists drove over a specially designed rumble strip..

It engineers- and consultancy firm DGMR was given the challenging assignment to technically realize this artistic concept. The idea was to have a speed limit of 60 km/h in a fun way: by rewarding motorists with music as soon as they kept to the speed limit. This made a traditional speed camera redundant and driving behavior was positively influenced by a musical experience.

For DGMR, and in particular their team of acoustic consultants who are both building physicists and musicians, this was an extremely interesting assignment. Although they had never designed a singing road before, they started working with enthusiasm. A plan was developed together with a road builder and a traffic psychologist. DGMR developed the technical design, the road builder laid the rumble strips and the traffic psychologist helped identify possible safety risks and how to limit them.

One of the major challenges of this project was predicting the noise impact on the environment. Although DGMR had a lot of experience with noise measurements, a singing road as a sound source was new territory. Noise pollution calculation software was not designed to measure melodies from cars driving over rumble strips. Trials and tests were used to try to predict the sound in the car and the environment as accurately as possible. But as with any innovation, there were unpredictable elements in the project.

After the construction of the Zingende Weg, the concept turned out to work. In the car the Frisian national anthem sounded as hoped: bright and clear. However, the experiment was not successful. The effects on the environment, that were difficult to estimate in advance, turned out to be larger than expected. In practice it turned out that the sound outside the car was experienced as a cacophony. This was partly due to the Doppler-effect and the fact that several cars drove over the rumble strips at the same time, causing a distorted one, unwanted amplified melody in uneven canon sounded.

To make matters worse, some drivers started driving faster to hear the effect of higher speeds, while others even drove against traffic to experience the melody in reverse. That was not anticipated in advance, not even by the traffic psychologist. In addition to being a nuisance, the rumble strips actually made the road less safe.

In consultation with the province, it was decided to use the rumble strips, in the interests of local residents, within a few days after the grand opening, which attracted a lot of press, to be removed again.

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Although the experiment in Friesland was ended prematurely, a positive spin-off resulted after all. A year after the project, DGMR was approached by a Hungarian road builder asking if DGMR could work with them to build a singing road in Hungary. This led to several successful projects, of which the third singing road has now been constructed in Hungary, this time at a safe distance from residential areas. Ironically, the extensive media attention of the failure in Friesland was the reason that DGMR was found by the Hungarian client.

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From (reverse) skin of the bear – Initial success can give us the false impression that we have chosen the right path. We often see that the step from a 'Proof of Concept' to a 'Proof of Business' is big and often even too big for many companies. For example, if a product is a national hit, This does not necessarily mean that international scaling is by definition a good plan. The opposite principle applies to the Zingende Weg: DGMR recognized that in the initial context the dense population of our little country was an obstacle. The courage and ability to make this concept succeed is commendable.

The light bulb – The fact that the project was able to succeed in Hungary is due to successful experimentation. Please note, By successful experimenting we mean successful learning. With the Frisian adventure, DGMR managed to validate many aspects, but also taught it what was needed to succeed. By actually describing the project as an experiment in advance and launching it, DGMR consciously opened itself up to the lessons.

The wrong side of the brain – People thought they knew how motorists would react. However, some motorists reacted completely differently than expected. Some drove faster, while others even drove against traffic to experience the melody in reverse.

The Honduras bridge – A well-intentioned attempt to get motorists to drive slower actually created other problems. In addition to the unsafe driving behavior mentioned above, noise pollution was also an unfavorable side effect of the intended solution.

This project shows the value of experimenting and daring to fail in the process of innovation. Although the Zingende Weg in Friesland was not entirely successful, it led to valuable insights and new opportunities, both within the Netherlands and abroad.

The Zingende Weg is an example of how a fun and artistic innovation can ultimately contribute to road safety. It teaches us even more about the unpredictability of innovations. The project underlines the importance of experimentation and failure intelligence: learning from experiments and failures creates new opportunities, namely now 3 beautiful singing roads in Hungary and who knows how many more will follow.