Dan Genz, The Examiner
2008-04-29 07:00:00.0
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WASHINGTON -

Few commuters have taken their traffic complaints to the Internet superhighway to chronicle local fury over millions of lost road revenue under a video campaign organized by the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority.

The “Give the General Assembly a Piece of Your Commute” campaign, designed to combine video of daily gridlock with outrage about fixing the problem, has only attracted a handful of videos.

“Folks are spending too much time and energy exercising their commute to comment on it,” said Martin Nohe, the NVTA vice chairman and a Prince William County supervisor.

“People have promised us videos, but they don’t know how to get them from their video camera onto their computer,” Nohe said, expecting the campaign to build as the issue attracts more media attention in the late spring and summer.

But NVTA critics, including Loudoun County Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio, say the regional government has a credibility problem. “It’s a novel approach, but it has no buy-in from the public,” he said.

As Gov. Tim Kaine prepares to call the legislature into a special session on transportation funding in June, the region’s transportation advocates are hoping to build momentum for plans to replace more than $330 million in taxes the Virginia Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in February.

Purcellville Mayor Bob Lazaro posted a six-minute clip of Loudoun County school buses swamping the town’s traffic, in part to help a town road project win $3.8 million in new funding.

“One of our council members’ daughters is a wiz at doing these videos. It was real simple,” Lazaro said. “I hope other people post because I think it brings the point home.”

One 13-second snippet captures the theme of the campaign, as an exasperated commuter laments, “Look at how bad this traffic is almost every day, and I’ll bet you there’s almost 5 miles more.”

dgenz@dcexaminer.com