Barstow international gateway

TRANSPORTATION has long been part of the story of Barstow, California, located in the southern portion of the state in the Mojave Desert.

The settlement began along the Mormon Corridor as freight wagons and animals followed the course of the Mojave River. When miners arrived following discovery of silver, railroads were constructed, with BNSF predecessor Santa Fe Railway arriving in 1886. It was then called Waterman Junction because steam locomotives were watered here.

The city was not long after named Barstow for Santa Fe President William Barstow Strong. For more than 140 years, BNSF has operated a railyard here, most recently as a classification yard.

Rail isn’t the only piece of Barstow’s narrative. The city is also well connected to freeway systems. At one time it was an important stop on Route 66.

And now, Barstow’s role in transportation is about to get really BIG – as in BNSF’s Barstow International Gateway (BIG), plans for which were announced October1, coinciding with the 75th anniversary of Barstow’s incorporation as a city.

The 4500-acre (1920 ha), $1.5 billion facility will be the first of its type in North America. The new integrated rail facility will be on the west side of Barstow, consisting of a railyard, intermodal facility and warehouses for transloading freight from smaller international containers to larger domestic containers.

BIG will optimise BNSF’s rail and distribution efficiency regionally and across the U.S. supply chain. It will also reduce truck traffic and freeway congestion in the Los Angeles Basin and the Inland Empire. A timetable for the project will depend on permitting studies that are underway now.

“It’s good for communities because in addition to reducing port and highway congestion around the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the facility will create 20,000 direct and indirect jobs,” Lena Kent, general director, Public Affairs, said. “It is being fully funded by BNSF and will not replace or become an extension of our existing Barstow Yard.”

Expressway

Currently when 40-foot international containers come off ships at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, there are two ways they are moved inland. First, they may dwell ondock until there are enough containers to build an 8000-foot-long (2240m) train, and then they travel directly to their destination by way of the Alameda Corridor, the 20-mile (36 km) rail “expressway” that connects the ports with transcontinental mainlines.

Or the containers are moved via truck to nearby warehouses. Here the container contents are unloaded, sorted and reloaded into 53-foot containers. These are either trucked to a railyard in Los Angeles and are transferred onto trains or they are trucked across country.

BIG will allow the direct transfer of containers from ships at the Ports of Los Angeles