1srelluc
Diamond Member
That's the dystopian future that Visalia resident Joseph Mello conjured when he addressed the High-Speed Rail Authority board on June 1. Mello said he had read the draft business plan the board was set to approve that day, and one particular element struck him. The plan proposed leasing land or providing energy for data centers that could be built in the Central Valley, fueling a massive tech boom up north.
Officials at the High-Speed Rail Authority see it differently. After the Trump administration yanked $4 billion in federal funding from the railroad, California was left on its own to lay 171 miles of track from Merced to Bakersfield, then extend it north to the Bay Area, and south to Los Angeles, at a cost of $126 billion.
The agency's only option, according to CEO Ian Choudri, is to monetize every asset associated with the nascent rail network, from land along the right-of-way to surplus electricity to fiber-optic connections. Developers of "hyper-scale" data centers are a perfect market for these resources, and many of them are eyeing the rural hinterlands where high-speed rail is currently under construction.
Talk about your "pipe dreams".....But hey, go for it!
