Target: Commuters

Be afraid, be very afraid, as Virginia Republicans dither.

SCARE TACTICS can be suitable when the situation is scary. That's a fair way to assess a draft of Virginia's six-year highway construction program, published this month by the state's Department of Transportation. The plan makes the point that if the current stalemate over transportation funding and the budget in Richmond is not broken, funding for improvements to primary, secondary and urban roads around the state, as well as to mass transit, will plummet starting this summer. In other words, commutes and traffic will only get worse. Scary? You bet.

Republicans who control the House of Delegates and are mainly responsible for the impasse fumed that the list of potentially delayed road projects is misleading, a red herring designed to rile their constituents. Of course there will be some compromise on transportation funding, they cooed soothingly. Not to worry! In fact, it is the House Republicans who are doing the misleading, because they show not the slightest willingness to compromise. And it is their own constituents who may suffer for it.

Among the projects that would be held up in the absence of a deal is the widening of a stretch of Route 17 in Stafford County, located in the district of none other than House Speaker William J. Howell. Mr. Howell, who has laid down the law of intransigence for the House Republicans in the current budget deadlock, has lately distinguished himself by rebuffing an invitation to lunch from Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D). So much for Mr. Howell's commitment to a sensible compromise.

A plan to purchase dozens of new Virginia Railway Express cars is also in jeopardy. The budget deal being blocked by the House Republicans includes funding to buy the rail cars, whose chief beneficiaries would be some of those Republicans' own constituents. They include, once again, commuters in Mr. Howell's district as well as in that of Del. Jeffrey M. Frederick, a Prince William County Republican.

Mr. Howell's Republican comrades in the House are determined to block any budget that includes new taxes for transportation (and that, incidentally, might give a political boost to the Democratic governor). Never mind that roads and rail have been starved of new revenue sources for 20 years, or that in the same period the state's population, economy and need for road improvements have boomed. In the long run, their stance will undermine the state's economy, powered by Northern Virginia, the very region in direst need of transportation help. In the short run, the damage will be done to ordinary commuters, including those who live, and vote, in districts held by House Republicans blocking the way forward.