BNSF to build $1.5 billion facility in Barstow, Calif., to handle container traffic

By | October 1, 2022

Barstow International Gateway will process port traffic, handle transloading between international and domestic containers

A Chicago-bound BNSF Railway international stack train departs Barstow, Calif., on Aug. 9, 2022. BNSF will build a $1.5 billion facility in Barstow to process container traffic to and from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. (Bill Stephens)

BARSTOW, Calif. — BNSF Railway has announced plans for what it is calling the first master-planned rail facility built by a Class I railroad — costing more than $1.5 billion and including a rail yard, intermodal facility, and warehouses for transloading from international to domestic containers.

The Barstow International Gateway, to be on the west side of the community in the Southern California desert, already the site of a major BNSF yard and shop facility, will cover approximately 4,500 acres. Containers will be transferred directly from ships to trains which will bring them to Barstow, where they will be processed and built into trains moving east. Trains arriving from the east will be similarly processed for cargo movements to the ports.

BNSF CEO Katie Farmer said the facility “will maximize rail and distribution efficiency regionally and across the U.S. supply chain and reduce truck traffic and freeway congestion in the Los Angeles Basin and the Inland Empire,” and improve operations at existing intermodal hubs in the Midwest, Texas, and elsewhere. Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said the project will “improve cargo velocity through our port” and “help ensure that goods moving through the San Pedro Bay will get to consumers, businesses, and manufacturers with speed and reliability.”

BNSF also says the new facility will directly and indirectly create 20,000 jobs.

“Projects like BNSF’s will work to strengthen our inland local economies,” said Treyland Bradley, deputy director of sustainable freight and supply chain development at the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. “We look forward to continuing to work with projects like these, as well as others, to drive transformative investments that will enhance and elevate California’s supply-chain ecosystem for a more efficient and resilient tomorrow.”

BNSF’s announcement offers no indication of a timeline for either the beginning or completion of the project, and does not indicate any customers have committed to the project, saying only that “we are always in discussion with current and future customers.” There is some additional information at the Barstow International Gateway Project website.

This is the second major project announced in a matter of weeks that seeks to move LA and Long Beach port traffic by rail to an inland location for further processing. In mid-August, private developers detailed plans for the Mojave Inland Port, a 410-acre facility to be served by Union Pacific [see “Plans advance for Mojave Inland Port …,” Trains News Wire, Aug. 15, 2022]. That facility aims to handle up to 3 million containers per year and says it could support as many as 3,000 new jobs.