A proposed Barstow rail facility that received local government approval Wednesday will help speed the transportation of goods from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, officials backing the project said.
The City Council in Barstow, a San Bernardino County community in the Mojave Desert about 115 miles northeast of Los Angeles, approved the hub, known as the Barstow International Gateway project, on Tuesday.
Touted as the “first-of-its kind integrated rail facility,” the hub promises to “improve supply chain efficiency, create thousands of jobs, reduce highway congestion and support the movement of goods nationally and globally,” according to BNSF Railway.
The gateway as planned would span 4,500 acres on the west side of Barstow and include a rail yard, as well as facilities and warehouses “designed to shift freight from international containers to domestic containers more efficiently and sustainably.”
“Containers arriving at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will move directly from ships to trains via the Alameda Corridor and onto the BNSF mainline to Barstow,” officials said. “At BIG, containers will be processed using zero emission cargo-handling equipment, then staged and built into trains headed east across BNSF’s national network. Westbound freight will also be consolidated at the facility, improving efficiency for trains returning to the ports and other California terminals.”
BNSF President and CEO Katie Farmer called it “a transformative, next-generation facility.”
“By creating a more resilient, efficient and low-carbon freight system, we’re giving shippers faster, more reliable inland access and greater network fluidity. This $4 billion private investment strengthens the entire supply chain, reduces congestion at the ports, and gives our customers a seamless product that also offers our customers greater optionality and flexibility,” she said.
Officials say that relocating container sorting and processing from congested port-adjacent areas to Barstow will enable a shift from trucking traffic to rail.