Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Vote for my video on transit with US PIRG ("I love traffic")

I co-wrote a video with my friend Andy Cobb (who directed and edited the entire thing) calling on Congress to fund transit in order to lessen traffic. We tried to make it funny by having the protagonist love traffic and call on Congress *not* to fund public transportation that sucks the lifeblood right of traffic.

We submitted the video to US PIRG's contest and we made it as one of the three finalists. Anyone can vote for the winner among the three finalists, so please check out the three videos and vote for "I love traffic").

It's timely, because while it isn't widely known, the nation's entire transportation infrastructure system is essentially broken. We rely on the gas tax to fund the Interstate Highway System and public transportation systems around the nation. Well, people are driving less so they are buying less gas which means the gas tax is not bringing in nearly as much money as it used to. That means we can't afford to keep the transportation system we have today in good shape, much less expand it (and we need to dramatically expand trains and buses to get us away from high gas prices). So things will be changing in Washington next year. Even President Bush's Secretary of Transportation agrees that transportation is broken (check out her blog).

It's fun to check out the video (and I do hope you vote for mine), but joining up with US PIRG as well as one of my clients, the Midwest High Speed Rail Association, will help to build political support to make sure Congress and the new President fund more trains and buses that save us money by using less gas instead of more highways that make us poorer by using much more expensive gasoline to get people around. 

I love traffic! Don't fund public transportation!

2 comments:

John Lamb said...

"I love traffic" should win by a mile. Great job!

Marie said...

Excellent use of reverse psychology (for lack of a better word) in a political message. Clever and short. I love it. I also Twitted it. Good luck.