Schwartz is the 12-plus-year executive director of the D.C.-based Coalition for Smarter Growth.
How did your career in “smart growth” start?
My first career was active duty Navy for nine years, then left to go to law school to work on environmental issues. I did a couple different conservation issues in between and then settled into running the Coalition for Smarter Growth.
Did you grow up in an urban or suburban environment?
I grew up in a suburban, rail car suburb in New York and then in the Navy you get an opportunity to see places that have become relatively sprawling in California and Florida. You get to see a lot of American growth patterns in those locations. I got to see in California some of the open space protection they had done. And I got to do the backpacking trip to Europe on a train in college.
You’ve taken up the cause of high speed rail in the Washington region. Why?
The high speed rail offers the opportunity to better connect our urban centers, relieve the overburdened interstates for those city to city trips and at least at the scale they’ve done it in Europe, target it for trips where rail is more efficient than aviation.
You’re backing the Chesapeake Crescent line?
If you look at the corridor from Baltimore to Washington to Fredericksburg to Richmond and to Hampton Roads, it is the true urban corridor of Maryland and Virginia. To maintain economic competitiveness and to widen alternatives to traffic choked roadways, higher speed rail will make a big difference.
Will the price tag justify the result?
You have to tie it to downtown revitalization around the stations. You’d want to build jobs around these corridors. Then you’d want to account for air pollution benefits, energy benefits and climate change benefits. I think there are strategic reasons and when you do full cost accounting, it will compare favorable to how costly some of these road projects are getting to be.
– Michael Neibauer
