BNSF's $4 billion Barstow rail yard is built to pull transload work out of IE warehouses

Citrus Belt Review: Barstow's City Council gave the 4,500-acre facility final unanimous approval on June 2, adopting the B.I.G. Specific Plan alongside a 25-year General Plan update. BNSF filed to streamline judicial review under SB 149 on February 24, and its January capital plan set aside money for property acquisition this year. Construction targets late 2026 or early 2027.

The mechanism is the IE story. At the June 2 meeting, BNSF's Lena Kent described how port goods move today: 40-foot containers come off the ships, get trucked to warehouses in the Inland Empire or Los Angeles, and are unloaded and repacked into 53-foot domestic boxes before heading east. Barstow is built to do that transfer at the rail yard instead — work that now happens in IE buildings. BNSF projects the facility cuts roughly 800,000 truck trips a year.

For a region whose industrial economy runs on exactly that drayage-and-transload activity, a project designed to relocate it up the I-15 is not a footnote.

BNSF puts construction above $1.5 billion; the city frames the total economic footprint nearer $4 billion. The facility didn't make the railroad's new 2025 impact report — but the council vote two weeks ago made it real.