TRAUMADINEJAD \TRAW ma DINN eh JAHD\ noun: The extra traffic stress felt by car commuters when a controversial world leader is in Manhattan.

USAGE: I caught all sorts of Traumadinejad on the FDR Drive because that Iranian president dude is at the U.N.

PBS offers up the special Blueprint America tonight about what roads, rails and cities will look like across America in the near future. Reported by Miles O’Brien, the special looks at light rail-friendly/bike-happy Portland, Ore., increasingly green New York City, and traffic-choked Denver.

The NY Times says O’Brien could’ve dug a bit deeper on some of the issues.

A lot of work went into these brief surveys, which are handsomely shot and have an interesting array of talking heads, including the urban studies scholar Owen D. Gutfreund and the former Colorado governor and slow-growth advocate Richard D. Lamm. But the segments are also larded with generic history — car culture, the interstate highways, the emptying of the central cities — and the accompanying generic images: tail fins, Eisenhower, Levittown.

Mr. O’Brien ties the transportation situations in Denver and Portland to local attitudes toward suburban development. It is certainly valid but seems simplistic: what about geography, energy sources, differences in local economies? And what does any of this civic history have to do with the future of our infrastructure, which is supposedly the point? It often feels as if a longer, more discursive report on urban planning had been shoehorned into the “Blueprint” format.

As America’s sports pages, particularly those on the East Coast, suddenly turn to horse racing this time of year, there’s an interesting yarn in today’s NY Times about Jakarta’s “jockeys”–people who charge a few shekels to jump into a commuter’s car and help the driver get access to the “3 in 1″ HOV highways.

It is not known if these jockeys, like those in America, stand 4′ 11″ and spew out a dialect that’s understood only in the deepest recesses of Cajun culture.  

Apparently traffic in the Indonesia capital, whose population is about the same as New York City’s, is–as Barney Stinson might say–legen-dary. According to the Times, the city is facing the prospect of “total traffic”–complete car paralysis–by 2011. Local officials say the problem is made worse by the jockeys, as motorists have to pull over to let them in and let them out.

“I don’t think the 3-in-1 system works because the number of jockeys and cars is increasing at the same time,” said Asep Suherman, 19, who became a jockey at the age of 10, works the morning and evening rush hours, and whiles away the time in between by relaxing at a mosque. “But even if it’s not working, I want them to extend the hours because the system is good for us poor people.”

Mr. Asep stood recently among dozens of women, men, boys and entire families, all lining the entrance to a main thoroughfare here and beckoning passing cars with a slightly raised index finger. The jockeys scattered as a police van made a perfunctory sweep but returned to their spots even before the vehicle’s flashing blue lights disappeared in Jakarta’s twilight.

And so Jakarta moved on, or did so very slowly, in a state of traffic limbo that many have likened to Indonesia itself, or at least its ingenuity in skirting regulations, and the vibrancy of its informal economy.

The jockeys, who are frequently small children, don’t actually look to get into the city center, or out of it, or anywhere else. They’re simply there to make money by filling a seat in the car; they get paid “less than a dollar” per ride. The concept is the exact opposite of a taxi cab–the driver pays you to ride in his car. It is not known if the jockeys are forced to watch WNBC’s “taxicasts” in the back of the car.

Indonesian officials say they’ll make the jockeys obselete with an electronic card system for drivers. They’re cracking down on jockeys by sending them to mop floors and do push-ups (nope, not a joke) at local detention centers.

At the other end of the auto-dependency spectrum, the Times featured a page one story yesterday on a German community getting by without the automobile.

When I walk a certain way to the train, I pass a house that’s teetering toward what one might call ramshackle, with a banged-up SUV outside that hasn’t moved since we moved in. Another car parked in front has a bumper sticker that says, “Shut up and Drive!”

My typical reaction to such a statement is similar to my reaction to people who say things like, “It’s America, learn f***ing English.” Easy, Archie Bunker.

But a new study from the University of Utah gives some credence to the “shut up and drive!” camp. According to the study, talking on cellphones while driving–even with the hands-free thingy in place–slows drivers down around 2 miles an hour.

“People kind of get stuck behind that person, and it makes everyone pay the price of that distracted driver,” said study author and professor David Strayer.

Overall, drivers on cellphones took about 3% longer to drive the same route as people who were not on the phone. With an estimated 1 in 10 drivers using the phone on a given commute, and it spells an extra 5 to 10% travel time for everyone on the road.

“The average person’s commute is longer because of that person who is on the cell phone right in front of them,” said Strayer. “That SOB on the cell phone is slowing you down and making you late.”

Q: “Why the hell does it take a Metro North train 15 minutes to get from Grand Central to 125^th Street?” 

A: Actually, it only takes 10 minutes (check any schedule) but it can seem like 15 minutes or even longer. The distance covered is actually 80 blocks (45th Street, which is roughly where the nose ends of the train are on the GCT platforms, up to 125th = 80 blocks.) And that’s four miles. First off, because a passenger sees little more than blackness outside the window, his sense of distance and time can become a little impaired. Still, 10 minutes to go four miles is only 24 m.p.h.—truly a crawl when you consider that even subways can hit close to 60 m.p.h. under the East River. So what gives with the delay? The principal reasons are two. Reason No. 1: Even though the complex was completed back in 1913, Grand Central’s trackage still constitutes the largest interlock in the world. You’ve got 41 tracks on the upper level, 26 on the lower—plus various layup tracks and sidings. All of these tracks eventually merge into a four-track mainline on one level just below street, which becomes the south end of the Park Avenue Tunnel.  Okay, so you’ve got all of these tracks moving up toward a bottleneck—crossing and converging in an ever-narrowing space. A switch governs each spot where two tracks meet, and here the train wheels have to roll over a small but significant gap in the rail. A train MUST go slowly when it crosses a switch, or the train could derail. And so, because the trains cross scores of switches on their way north, they CRAWL through the interlock—and that takes time. The tracks finally converge into the four-track mainline at roughly 51^st Street, but that’s six city blocks’ worth of switches that a Metro North train must navigate. If you’d like to see just how incredibly complex the GCT interlock is, go here for a look at the upper-level schematic:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:RailUS_GCT-upperTracksPlan.gif 

If your train happens to be departing from the lower level, the trip can take even longer. Why? Because the train has to literally climb a ramp to the upper level. Most mainline railroads avoid grades steeper than 2%; the inclined tracks that climb between levels in Grand Central range between 2.6% and 3%. This is a difficult climb for a train, even an electric one, and it takes a while.  Reason No. 2: Once your train has finally made it out of the interlock, another delay arrives to ruin your evening. In railroad parlance, you’re under a “speed restriction.” This will slow up the rate of your train for the next several miles. The restrictions are tightest within the Park Avenue Tunnel, but the reason for any speed restriction is the same: Safety. The slower a train is moving, the less chance it stands of colliding with another train. And the sheer number of trains you’ll find in the Grand Central complex at any given time is going to be far greater than what you’d see at most points up the line. Think about it: At poor old Purdy’s, for example, you might see two trains an hour, one northbound and one south. But at peak rush down at GCT, you might have a train coming in or leaving every five minutes. From the earliest days, then, back when the New York Central Railroad operated the line now known as Metro North, the GCT track region has been under speed restrictions that become progressively stricter the closer a train gets to the terminal itself. I’m using an old-time manual for the following numbers, and the speeds may have changed a bit—but the concept remains the same. A train moving anywhere between Woodlawn and Melrose in the Bronx is free to go up to 60 m.p.h., but on the stretch between Melrose and 62^nd Street inside the Park Avenue Tunnel, the speed limit is 35 m.p.h. If a train is operating anywhere below 62^nd Street—in the tunnel or within the interlock itself, the speeds are between 6 and 10 m.p.h.  But next time you’re on your train leaving GCT, take note of the change in speed restriction zones. Once your train reaches 62^nd Street (easy to find, because there’s an emergency exit platform at 59^th Street that’s lit up), you’ll notice that you’ll start moving at a nice clip. By the time you blow out of the tunnel’s mouth at 98^th Street, you’re going far faster than you had been back when your train was navigating the interlock. Still wanna know more? Speed are further restricted via what’s known as the “block” system—used in most all railroads—that operates on a simple principle: If you wish to avoid collisions (and who wouldn’t?) two trains cannot be in the same spot at the same time. A block, then, is a stretch of track inside which only one train can be at a given time. During peak hours at Grand Central, when you’ve got many trains having to share a mere four tracks in the Park Avenue Tunnel, it’s much more likely that one train will get too close to the block that another train is in. If it does, it has to slow down. Within the interlock and the Tunnel, blocks are easy to see. Stand in the head-end car and look out the front window and you’ll notice devices that resemble traffic lights that are bolted to the right-hand wall or standing freely on the same side. Each block of track is marked off by one of those banks of lights. If the light is red, it means there’s a train in the block ahead of the one your train is in—and the motorman must stop the train before he reaches the light. (If he runs it, by the way, he’s looking at one week’s suspension without pay, at the very least.) If the light is yellow, your train must slow down because the train ahead of you is just leaving its block. And if the light’s green, well, you’re free to roam. And so, your train’s speed as it departs GCT can also be affected by the number of other trains operating in the same area. Because the trains must remain at least a track block apart, slow-downs are inevitable. More recently, signal blocks have been augmented by the “cab signal” system. Instead of watching out for lights, the motorman listens for a rapid series of beeps that sound in his cab should his train be getting too close to another train ahead. The beeps or the lights are both triggered electrically by a system that senses a train’s presence within a given block through the axle that connects both tracks to form a circuit. If you’re sitting near the cab in the head-end car, the beeps are easy to hear, and when you do hear them, you’ll notice that your train will immediately slow down. Be it cab signal or block signal, the idea’s the same: keep the trains apart. But keeping them apart often means delaying them—and that adds time to your commute. And that, those of you who are still awake, is why it takes 10 minutes to get from Grand Central to 125th Street. —Engine Bob