BNSF signal maintainer Gabriel Chavez loves his job. As a third-generation railroader, he witnessed the stable income and job security his father, a carman, enjoyed, and knew he wanted to carry on the family tradition. Based in Hanford, California, Chavez starts his day with a team conference call to discuss the day’s tasks and safety…
BNSF Railway plans to invest more than $1.5 billion to construct a state-of-the-art master-planned rail facility in Southern California. The Barstow International Gateway will be an approximately 4,500-acre new integrated rail facility on the west side of Barstow, consisting of a rail yard, intermodal facility and warehouses for transloading freight from international containers to domestic containers. The project will bring thousands of direct jobs to California’s high desert communities, reduce highway and port congestion, and maximize rail and distribution efficiency regionally and across the U.S. supply chain.
The Southern California International Gateway (SCIG) would have been a $500+ million investment by BNSF to build a new, state of the art intermodal railyard facility located within four miles of the San Pedro Bay ports, resulting in improvement of both traffic congestion and air quality in the region. BNSF committed to making SCIG the greenest intermodal facility in the U.S., by investing more than $130 million in green technology, including electric cranes, ultra-low emissions switching locomotives and liquefied natural gas (LNG) or equivalent yard equipment.
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