The financial sustainability and resilience of railroad and transit operations depends on managing both costs and revenues. The rapid growth of artificial intelligence is reshaping both sides of this equation, creating urgent challenges for different stakeholders across the rail ecosystem. AI driven data center expansion has triggered an unprecedented surge in electricity demand: U.S. data center power consumption reached 183 TWh in 2024, over 4% of national electricity, and is projected to more than double by 2030. In the PJM market serving 67 million people across 13 Midwestern and Mid Atlantic states, capacity auction prices surged from $29 per megawatt day
in 2024 to $329 in 2026, an increase largely attributable to data center load growth. For electrified transit agencies and commuter railroads procuring through rolling short term contracts, this volatility amplifies recontracting risk, yet these operators lack tools for quantifying how contract length and terms interact with wholesale market conditions or how instruments such as VPPAs, physical PPAs, behind the meter generation, and demand response could mitigate exposure.
The same AI boom is simultaneously driving extraordinary demand for fiber infrastructure. AI focused data centers require 16 to 36 times more fiber per rack than traditional facilities, and the Fiber Broadband Association projects the U.S. must more than double its installed fiber miles from 160 million to 373 million by 2029. Power transmission co location along railroad corridors is likewise accelerating, as illustrated by the SOO Green HVDC Link following a railroad corridor from Iowa to Illinois. For the freight railroads and commuter agencies that own these corridors, right of way assets are becoming substantially more valuable, yet they lack tools for evaluating this revenue potential across states.
This project develops publicly available interactive dashboards serving these distinct stakeholders. The first allows electrified transit operators to explore how contract length and terms affect recontracting risk and how different procurement instruments can mitigate that risk. The second allows corridor owning railroads to evaluate the revenue potential of fiber and power right of way leasing across states.