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An up-vertical-slope battle

The new governor wants departments to purge the jargon from their vocabularies. For transportation engineers, that won't be easily done or said.

By JOHN BARRY
Published March 18, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Scott Keeler] Florida Department of Transportation Communications Director Dick Kane describes how the department will simplify written communications in the department.

TALLAHASSEE - For many millennia, the words have gaily danced off tongues inside the Florida Department of Transportation. Vehicular access connection. Its clashing cadences soothe the tin ears of road engineers like the lapping of waves. The phrase is as priceless as a pocket protector. It's the engineering equivalent of "rough winds do shake the darling buds of May."

One man has tried to ban those words. The phrase pounds his eardrums like hydraulic hammers crashing through asphalt. For years, everyone ignored him. What's this guy doing in the FDOT? He must be an English major.

Now he's in charge. Now they have to listen. The governor says so. Now they can no longer say vehicular access connection.

Now they must say: DRIVEWAY.

- - -

Immediately after his inauguration in January, Gov. Charlie Crist banned gobbledygook. He issued an order called the Plain Language Initiative. Everybody in state government had to start writing in simple English.

The governor had gotten upset during a campaign stop in September. A reporter had asked him about an RLE.

"RLE?" said the candidate. "What's an RLE?"

It's a school funding acronym for Required Local Effort. Crist was once commissioner of education, but even he didn't know what an RLE was. So as soon as he got to be governor, he gave every agency and department under his command a deadline. They had until April 2 to figure out how to say what they mean.

- - -

At the Florida Department of Transportation, Dick Kane has long been the chief torturer of traffic engineers. He's the department's communication director. He used to be a TV newsman. He had a motto for telling stories on TV: "Simplify. Simplify. Simplify."

Engineers were his favorite straight men. "What's the difference between an introverted and an extroverted engineer?" he'd ask.

"An introverted engineer stares at his shoes when he talks. An extroverted engineer stares at your shoes."

Kane made a video he called "Worst Case Scenarios" to train supervisors. It's a compilation of TV reports on FDOT fiascoes. His favorite is a Pinellas County news clip that shows a long line of stalled traffic leading up to a bridge. The reporter wades through the stopped cars to the crest of the bridge, where he finds three FDOT workers leaning over the side.

One is fishing. The other two are watching.

---

In the old days, the FDOT might have issued a Fact Sheet stating that the three workers were so busy investigating the population divergence and incipient speciation of marine fauna below the arch span that they failed to notice interruptions in the recurring cyclical transportation between domicile and location of employment.

Everyone would have shaken their heads and gone away. That's why gobbledygook exists. It keeps people like you - and the governor - from knowing too much, from asking too many questions.

It's a great way to deliver bad news. The Plain English Campaign Web site shows how a city council can make a tax hike sound like a tax cut: "We are pleased to announce this year's tax increase, which is the lowest yet. At just 3.2 percent, this means that this year's tax has reduced in real terms, so we are actually offering local residents more for less."

There are more variations of doublespeak than there are of prayer or profanity. The Dilbert Gobbledygook Generator offers 30-million phrases. Schools say they're retaining you when they flunk you. Cops say they're 10-7 when they take a doughnut break. A guy says he's serially monogamous when he can't commit. A hospital bills you $26.79 for acetylsalicylic acid and you never know that all you got was aspirin.

- - -

When Crist's plain language mandate went out, Kane quickly volunteered to rehabilitate the FDOT and its 7,000 jargon-hardened employees.

Should he start by banning "paved multilane throughway conveying a significant percentage or portion of regional daily motorized travel"? FDOT-speak for major roadway.

Or should he eradicate "asymmetrical horizontal alignment"? (Curve in the road.)

Kane wouldn't want to leave out "recurring cyclical transportation between domicile and location of employment." (In real life, that means daily commute.)

Oh heck, Kane would just ban all of them.

Like "digital visual vehicular flow monitor," which really means "traffic camera."

And "aggregates," which means "rocks."

As Kane puts it, anyone who uses words like that must have aggregates in his head.

- - -

This guru of straight talk has tried to find out if employees can recognize gobbledygook when they see it. He created the "2007 FDOT Plain Language Checklist" and sent it out to all the districts with instructions on grading randomly selected documents.

They were asked to answer questions like these:

"Does the document speak clearly to the intended audience?"

"Is this written with a positive, active voice and strong verbs?"

From Pinellas County came this CR 296 Fact Sheet:

"Construct two new two-lane Ramps F and G and reconstruction of four lane roadway to accommodate a retained fill section with frontage roads."

The checklist person had scrawled beside it, "This fact sheet tells me nothing."

A brain-concussion of a document also arrived from Hillsborough County, labeled "Gandy Blvd. Design." (You may want to let two Tylenol take effect before reading on.)

"Operational improvements will include pavement rehabilitation and widening, replacement of existing traffic signals equipment at West-shore Blvd., Manhattan Ave., Lois Ave., and Dale Mabry Highway including replacement of signal poles with mast arms, channelization of turn lanes at Westshore, Manhattan (EB dual left turn lanes at 10 ft. each), Lois and Dale Mabry (dual turn lanes at 10 ft. each) . . ." (The sentence goes on for another 38 multisyllabic words, but you get the idea.)

The official sending it in was asked, "Is the information in a logical, fluid sequence?"

He checked yes.

---

Kane has just written a script for a play. He's going to make it into a training video. It stars Larry, an FDOT engineer. The scene is a public hearing. Larry is wearing "a bow tie and jacket surrounded by complex looking plans."

Larry: "And so - what we're faced with is a signalized, at grade intersection coupled with a functionally obsolete, grade separated interchange.

"It's anticipated that the pilot project will be a precursor to the long-term elevated solution.

"Compounding the problem, however, is that ingress and egress to the nearby hump yard is nearly impossible."

Larry drones on. He finally concludes, "I hope I haven't dumbed down the benefits of this project too much for you."

- - -

Dick Kane's favorite story is about a bridge project near Orlando. Test holes for the pilings had been dug underwater. After the test, the holes had to be plugged.

A reporter asked the bridge engineer, "What do you plug those holes with?"

The engineer answered, "spherical bladders."

He meant basketballs purchased at Kmart.

John Barry can be reached at (727) 892-2258 or jbarry@sptimes.com.

A layman's guide

Asking transportation engineers to speak plain English is really throwing an asymmetrical horizontal alignment at them. Here's a sample of FDOT vocabulary:

Aggregate: rock

Fine aggregate: sand

Digital visual vehicular flow monitor: traffic camera

Vertical slope: hill

Asymmetrical horizontal alignment: curve in the road

Delineators: markers

Paved multi-lane throughway conveying a significant percentage or portion of regional daily motorized travel: major roadway

Recurring cyclical transportation between domicile and location of employment: daily commute

RPM Reflective pavement markers: reflectors

Sheet piles: temporary retaining walls

Shop drawings: engineering plans prepared by contractor

Surety: liability

Type A fence: farm fence

Type B fence: chain-link fence

[Last modified March 17, 2007, 16:36:33]