BARSTOW City Council in south-central California has approved BNSF’s $US 4bn Barstow International Gateway (BIG) project, paving the way for construction to start later this year or in early 2027.
BIG is a planned 1820ha integrated rail facility on the west side of Barstow that includes a rail yard, intermodal facility, and transload warehouses designed to transfer freight from international containers to domestic containers. The project includes 331km of track and 35 bridges and culverts.
Barstow is a major hub on the Class 1 railway’s southern transcontinental main line in San Bernardino County where the Needles, Mojave, and Cajon subdivisions meet. The City Council’s approval marks “a major milestone for one of the most significant freight infrastructure investments in California’s history,” BNSF says.
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 main line to Barstow. At BIG, containers will be processed using zero emission cargo-handling equipment, then staged and built into trains heading east. Westbound freight will also be consolidated at BIG, improving efficiency for trains returning to the ports and other Californian terminals.
“BIG represents a fundamental shift in how freight flows through the state,” BNSF says. “By relocating container sorting and processing from congested port-adjacent communities to Barstow - a high desert hub with strong transportation infrastructure - the project enables a major mode shift from trucking to cleaner, more efficient rail.”
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