A soft, soothing side of traffic

If you've met Traffic Engineer Jon Gillespie, you'd know that he's a courteous, mild mannered man with a ruddy face and a generous smile. The word traffic, whether to describe freeway bottlenecks or movement of illegal drugs, conjures up dangerous and unpleasant images. Somehow Gillespie belies his title.

And who doesn't want a guy named Gillespie solving their traffic woes?

On Tuesday, the City Council asked Gillespie to return with a report on traffic calming devices. Sounds nice doesn't it? It turns out, said Gillespie, traffic calming devices aren't so calming after all.

A traffic calming device is another word for speed hump, which is another word for speed bump. If a traffic calming device was installed in front of your house, you'd certainly need another device to calm you down. Imagine a truck full of lawn mowers going past your bedroom window, Gillespie said.

You can also try speed pillows. Sounds nice, no? Speed pillows -- available in goose down and memory foam -- are a series of smaller bumps that slow down cars but have no affect on emergency vehicles.

There are also rumble strips, which are raised markers, and pavers, which give the cobble stone effect. All this traffic vocabulary that Gillespie taught me has left me, well, dizzy.