Right-of-Way Revolution to Turn Highways and Railroads into Energy and Broadband Arteries

The nation's highways and railroads – long reserved for moving people and freight – are drawing fresh attention as potential corridors for the power lines, fiber-optic cables and water pipelines needed by a 21st-century economy. Surging demand from advanced manufacturing, data centers and artificial intelligence (AI) is colliding with a slow and difficult siting process for new infrastructure, while existing transportation rights-of-way (ROWs) offer long, linear routes that in many places are already graded, cleared and permitted. The prospect also carries strategic urgency: The United States is trying to expand domestic capacity and compete with China, which has built more high-voltage transmission lines in the last 15 years than the U.S. has in its entire history.

That convergence of demand, existing transportation infrastructure and geopolitical pressure has prompted three parallel federal efforts.

• The U.S. Department of Transportation's (DOT) America's Great Corridors of Commerce (AGCC) initiative would create a voluntary public-private framework for colocating multiple utilities along existing ROWs.
• The Broadband and Telecommunications RAIL Act would establish mandatory timelines for broadband access across railroad ROWs.
• The Rail and Highway Transmission Planning Act (H.R. 7405) would develop an analytical and interagency foundation for high-voltage transmission on highway and rail corridors.

Taken together, these efforts frame the policy debate around three distinct tools: voluntary partnerships, mandatory access rules and federal planning.

The challenge is especially acute for the electric grid. Regional transmission organizations and utilities across the country are reporting record load-growth forecasts driven by data centers, manufacturing facilities and new domestic energy production, increasing pressure to identify transmission routes that can be permitted and constructed more quickly.

The Case for Transportation Corridors

The U.S. has approximately 160,000 centerline miles of National Highway System and 140,000 route miles of freight rail already in place. These corridors represent vast linear ROWs that have already been graded, cleared and permitted for infrastructure use. Meanwhile, the nation faces a growing gap between surging demand for energy and telecommunications capacity and the infrastructure needed to deliver it. As DOT's Federal Register notice puts it, "significant and immediate investment in longitudinal utility infrastructure is essential to meet the surging energy and power needs of critical manufacturing and emerging technologies that drive America's security, prosperity, and global leadership."

The scale of the challenge is significant. DOT has noted that China has built more high-voltage transmission lines in the last 15 years than the U.S. has in its entire history, fueling rapid growth in advanced manufacturing and AI technology. Meanwhile, domestic demand for fiber optic cable is expected to double by 2029, and a multitrillion-dollar backlog of upgrades for existing transportation infrastructure continues to grow.

Today, utility installations within transportation ROWs are typically assessed and executed on a case-by-case basis without a comprehensive commercial, technical or financial plan. This fragmented approach increases time and resource demands, creates inefficiencies and restricts the ability to scale. The emerging federal response – spanning the U.S. Congress and the executive branch – aims to change that, though each initiative takes a different approach.

America's Great Corridors of Commerce

On August 26, 2026, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy unveiled AGCC – a voluntary, applicant-driven initiative administered through DOT's Build America Bureau. AGCC gives state departments of transportation, railroads and other infrastructure owners a framework for leasing transportation ROWs to private-sector "Corridor Managers" through public-private partnerships (P3s).

The Corridor Manager would take responsibility for design, construction, financing, long-term operation and maintenance, and business development, giving utility companies a single point of responsibility for accessing the corridor. The ROW owner would retain final authority and receive shared revenue under pre-negotiated contractual terms.

Rather than focusing on a single utility type or ordering a study, AGCC contemplates colocation of electrical transmission, fiber optics, water pipelines, broadband and communications infrastructure within the same corridor. One likely delivery method is underground utility tunnels capable of housing multiple infrastructure items, offering economies of scale from "digging once" along with greater reliability and resiliency. Above-ground and hybrid approaches remain available.

Designated corridors would receive federal concierge services and technical assistance through an interagency task force organized around two objectives. First, the task force would streamline National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review by providing a dedicated federal point of contact, identifying applicable categorical exclusions and coordinating agencies under the One Federal Decision framework. Second, it would streamline access to federal funding and financing, including the Build America Bureau's Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) and Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) programs and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Energy Dominance Financing.

DOT frames the model as offering several potential benefits: reduced costs and improved efficiency from coordinating permitting, construction and operations under a single Corridor Manager; support for strategic industrial land use by linking data centers, manufacturing facilities and distribution hubs to shared utility and logistics infrastructure; and economies of scale from shared trenching or tunneling. DOT has also said the model is designed to operate "at no additional cost to the taxpayer," with lease revenue reinvested in the transportation asset itself, and has pointed to a preference for using existing, previously developed ROW over new greenfield routes as a way to limit additional land disturbance. These potential benefits reflect DOT's stated rationale for AGCC, but some stakeholders – including railroad operators concerned about safety and operational disruption, environmental groups wary of expedited NEPA reviews and state regulators with jurisdiction over utility siting – may raise concerns about the pace or scope of deployment.

The Build America Bureau published a request for information (RFI) in the Federal Register on August 18, 2026 (91 FR 53479), seeking public input on the AGCC model and proposed designation process. The RFI addresses deployment barriers, cross-jurisdictional complexities, the P3 model, technical assistance needs, the designation process, infrastructure acceleration versus greenfield alternatives and utility-rate affordability; comments are due September 12, 2026. An interagency task force would screen proposed corridors based on market demand, corridor readiness, financial feasibility, opportunities for permitting and other streamlining, and stakeholder support.

After the comment period, DOT anticipates publishing its first Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) and expects to select up to five corridors in the first year. Additional information on deadlines, application requirements and selection criteria is expected to be published on the AGCC web page.

The broader economic rationale is increasingly hard to miss. Local manufacturing hubs, semiconductor plants and data centers increasingly require simultaneous access to high-capacity logistics networks and fiber-optic data infrastructure. AGCC is designed to plan for those needs together rather than through separate, duplicative projects.

For the energy sector, the timing is notable. Utilities, regional grid operators and large power consumers are increasingly focused on how to connect new generation resources to load centers while reducing siting conflicts and permitting delays. Existing transportation corridors offer a potentially attractive pathway for high-voltage transmission and related energy infrastructure, particularly in regions experiencing rapid industrial growth and increasing electricity demand.

The Legislative Landscape

AGCC is the executive branch's broadest and most operational response, but Congress is pursuing narrower measures that address access to telecommunications corridors and the analytical groundwork for electric transmission. Those bills provide the legislative counterpoint to DOT's initiative.

The RAIL Act: Mandating Access Timelines for Broadband

The Broadband and Telecommunications RAIL Act (RAIL Act) was introduced in both the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 6046, Rep. John Joyce (R-Pa.)) and U.S. Senate (S. 3268, Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.)) in November 2025. The RAIL Act targets one of the broadband industry's most persistent permitting bottlenecks: crossing railroad ROW.

The bill would establish a mandatory framework under which broadband and telecommunications providers submit applications to railroad carriers seeking to place or modify equipment within their ROW. Railroads would have 60 days to approve or deny an application and may deny only on grounds of safety or substantial interference with railroad infrastructure. Once approved, work must be scheduled to begin within 30 days, and compensation is capped at actual costs incurred.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would serve as the dispute resolution body and be required to promulgate implementing regulations within a year. The House version was ordered reported by the Committee on Energy and Commerce on a 51-0 vote in December 2025, reflecting bipartisan support.

The RAIL Act is narrow by design: It addresses only broadband and telecommunications equipment in railroad corridors through a regulatory mandate. But, it signals a congressional willingness to intervene in ROW access disputes that have historically been left to private negotiation – a principle with potentially broader implications.

Although telecommunications stakeholders have been supportive, rail stakeholders have raised concerns about the legislation's impact on safety, oversight and private property interests.

The Rail and Highway Transmission Planning Act: Building the Analytical Foundation

The second legislative effort takes a wider aperture. Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-Calif.) introduced the Rail and Highway Transmission Planning Act (H.R. 7405) in February 2026. Rather than mandating access, this bill would direct the Secretary of Energy – in consultation with the Transportation Secretary, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and national laboratories – to conduct a comprehensive study evaluating the potential benefits and challenges of constructing high-voltage transmission infrastructure on highway and rail ROW.

The study would require the DOE to review existing transmission-in-corridor projects, determine best practices for planning and permitting, generate or consolidate data on ROW suitability, evaluate various transmission configurations (overhead, underground, alternating current, direct current, point-to-point and multiterminal systems) and assess cost and time savings compared to conventional greenfield siting. It would also require analysis of environmental effects, electromagnetic interference with rail signaling and safety concerns during maintenance. The final product would be an interagency action plan and publicly available data resources due within three years of enactment.

The bill's stated premise – that "transportation rights-of-way, including highway and rail rights-of-way, should be utilized in ways that serve the public interest, including accommodating new electric transmission infrastructure" – maps directly onto the same thesis that DOT is now pursuing administratively. Where the RAIL Act focuses on telecommunications, H.R. 7405 targets the electric grid – arguably the higher-stakes application given the national energy emergency declared by Executive Order 14156. Advocates of transmission expansion have increasingly pointed to existing transportation ROWs as one of the most promising opportunities to accelerate grid buildout while minimizing local opposition, land-use conflicts and permitting challenges that often accompany new greenfield transmission corridors.

3 Approaches Compared

The three federal efforts share the same underlying premise but differ in scope, mechanism and timeline:

What to Watch

Several dynamics will shape whether these parallel efforts produce real results or remain aspirational.

First, surface transportation reauthorization looms. Congress recently passed and President Donald Trump signed a continuing resolution extending surface transportation authorities through December 11, 2026. Though the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure passed a $580 billion reauthorization bill earlier this year, the measure has yet to pass the House floor, and the Senate has not taken any action to date. Congress will need to enact a full surface transportation bill to continue vital transportation programs, and if the highway and rail networks that all three initiatives depend on are themselves underfunded, the promise of leveraging those corridors for utility colocation faces practical headwinds.

Second, the relationship between voluntary and mandatory approaches remains unresolved. AGCC is a voluntary, incentive-based framework that relies on ROW owners choosing to participate. The RAIL Act, by contrast, would compel railroads to accept telecommunications access on defined terms. Whether these models complement each other – or create tension between industries that prefer one approach over the other – will become clearer as the AGCC comment period closes and the RAIL Act advances.

Third, financing will be critical. AGCC envisions P3 arrangements in which private Corridor Managers finance construction (potentially with help from TIFIA, RRIF or DOE loans) and recoup costs through utility lease revenue shared with ROW owners. The economics may be especially compelling for transmission developers, who frequently face significant routing, land acquisition and permitting costs when pursuing entirely new corridors. The P3 model promises no additional cost to taxpayers, but the financial viability of individual corridors will depend on utility demand, corridor length, construction costs and the regulatory environment in each state.

Fourth, permitting reform remains a significant wild card. As electricity demand from data centers, advanced manufacturing and emerging technologies continues to grow, policymakers are increasingly focused on how to accelerate energy infrastructure deployment. Though AGCC does not alter underlying permitting requirements, transportation ROWs may become an attractive complement to broader permitting reforms because they offer a means of reducing routing conflicts, limiting greenfield development and potentially accelerating transmission construction.

Finally, the central question is whether these efforts will converge into a unified federal policy framework or continue as separate tracks administered by different agencies under different authorities. The September 12, 2026, AGCC comment deadline is the first public opportunity to weigh in on DOT's proposed operating model, but the longer-term test will be whether Congress and the executive branch can reconcile their parallel approaches to unlocking the same corridors. For electric utilities, transmission developers and large power consumers, the answer could influence how quickly new generation resources, manufacturing facilities and data centers gain access to the infrastructure needed to meet growing electricity demand. That answer will determine whether the transportation network becomes, in practice, "a new backbone for the world's strongest economy."

Holland & Knight's Transportation and Energy teams continue to monitor developments in the industry. For questions or potential impacts to your business, contact the authors or another member of the team.

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