The intersection of language and public policy can be a strange place, I decided while sitting through the equivalent of school detention in a library meeting room.

"I got sent to traffic calming school," I kept thinking, interspersed with, "When do we get to use the radar guns?"

In a nutshell, I moved last year from a narrow street in Ballard to a wide street where there have already been two car accidents requiring medical attention in the last nine months. To research options, I entered into the alternate world of the Seattle Department of Transportation’s Traffic Calming Program.

As a lapsed English major, I still have a problem with using the already dubious word “calming” as a noun. Calm means tranquil, the absence of agitation, winds under one mile per hour. Music or lotions might be described as having calming effects, but what is traffic calming? (It’s a process! according to the SDOT presentation).

Through later research, I learned that traffic calming was coined by the Institute of Transportation Engineers. However during their international conference in 1997, they realized that everyone had a different definition and decided to create a subcommittee to work on an acceptable definition.

Per the Institute of Transportation Engineers, traffic calming is the combination of mainly physical measures that reduce the negative effects of motor vehicle use, alter driver behavior and improve conditions for non-motorized street users.

The only definition I can find for calming refers to it as appeasement, or acceding to demands, which actually makes more sense. If someone suspects that their street has become a cut-through for speeding non-neighbors, they contact the city and are appeased (and semi-sedated) by attending a traffic calming meeting as a first step.

Once you’ve attended a meeting and gotten four neighbors to sign that they share your concerns, then you can check out a donated radar gun and start collecting data.

In the meantime, there’s Traffic Calming 101 in which you learn that Seattle has more traffic circles than any other city and narrower streets. Evidently the narrow streets with parking on both sides are all part of a master plan for slowing traffic in the neighborhoods.

The city receives at least 150 requests for traffic circles (commonly known as islands) per year but can only afford to build 10. Given the wait list and lack of funds, neighbors are encouraged to learn other methods to encourage behavior modification of drivers by demonstrating they are traversing “a street that cares.”

There were 19 other people attending the October NTCP (Neighborhood Traffic Calming Program). While we listened to Transportation Engineer Luke Korpi talk about educating other reasonable people I just know we were all thinking, "How much longer until we get to see the radar gun?"

Korpi said, “You may have called us because you wanted SDOT to come out and do something, stop signs, a traffic circle…we don’t want your expectations to be too high. It’s more of a partnership program.”

He described educational brochures and street level signs that could be employed during Phase I. Finally we got to Phase II: data collection.

Everyone perked up when Transportation Specialist Christina Legazpi pulled the radar gun out of its case and suggested leaning it on the dashboard at an angle so as to capture traffic in both directions over a two-hour time period. The audience may not have been calmed, but they were finally feeling appeased.

What comes of documenting street speeds? Perhaps a letter to the speeder, not for enforcement, but as a friendly reminder of the speed limit. It might lead to marking an intersection, it might not.

Then Korpi showed pictures of “pie in the sky” items like traffic circles, speed humps (more gentle than speed bumps) and chicanes (similar to road slaloms). He also showed alternative calming measures such as the street mural that sends the message, “neighbors engaged enough to put designs on their street.”

When hands went up at the end for questions it became obvious no one’s personal agenda had been calmed by the mandatory introduction to the partnership process with the city.

“Can we use the speed gun to collect data on more than one street?” a woman asked. “What if the city is foisting two-sided parking on us and we think it will be a disaster?”

The Seattle Department of Transportation representative smiled, completely unflustered. It occurred to me that he was not in the business of calming traffic but rather the business of trafficking calm. With that, I sped home to collect signatures from the neighbors; I’ve always wanted to use a radar gun.

Peggy Sturdivant can be reached atlargeinballard@yahoo.com.