30 BELLARM INE MAGAZINE Celebrating Undergraduate Research Footprint Research Three students study ways to make a more sustainable campus By Emily Ruppel ’08 emily@emilyruppel.com Talk to anyone who’s been to the Netherlands, and they’ll likely tell you how awesome it is to be able to hop on a bicycle and ride anywhere they please, safely and without too much strenuous labor (there are about three hills in the entire country). Because so many people choose to commute by bicycle than by car in the Netherlands, they help to create a healthy, less-polluted atmosphere in even the country’s largest cities. Now compare the bike-riding culture across the pond with ours: Cyclists in Louisville must take circuitous routes to get where they’re going if they want to enjoy the relative safety of bicycle lanes, and often, these routes contain a lot of hills, which aren’t so conducive to looking professional when you get where you’re going. For Bellarmine faculty, staff and students who would like to ride to and from school, a research study by Environmental Studies student Andrew Dyson of Louisville may provide some relief. He compared the bicycle routes to Bellarmine from two neighborhoods using both the city’s suggested bike routes and more direct routes that are on more heavily used and faster-moving streets. He analyzed direct routes, bike routes, the position of significant slopes and general elevation data, as well as the travel time, to determine the optimal routes for people commuting to Bellarmine by bicycle. “I thought of (this research) as activism, rather than research, really,” said Mr. Dyson, a liberal studies major from Louisville who has been involved with groups advocating a more bicycle-friendly city. “I had an idea that
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