Impact

BNSF invested more than $1.8 billion in the TransCon over the past decade. These investments help meet freight shipping demand, reducing congestion and pollution. BNSF’s investment along the TransCon Corridor creates capacity to take more trucks off the road. Investments on the TransCon include:

• Double and Triple Tracking – BNSF spent over $800 million in the last 10 years to double and triple track the TransCon. This makes for more efficient freight movement rather than the stop-and-go required by trains on a single-track corridor, increasing the capacity of the corridor and reducing transit time.
• Memphis Intermodal Facility– The recent completion of a $200 million expansion and rebuilding of the Memphis Intermodal Facility will double BNSF's lift capacity to handle one million lifts per year in the Memphis market. The facility is equipped with wide-span, electric, rail-mounted gantry cranes, which produce zero emissions on site and will significantly reduce the number of hostler trucks needed to move containers within the yard. This facility also features a streamlined automated gate system for trucks as they enter and exit the Memphis Intermodal Facility, which uses digital cameras to record images of containers, chassis and tractors. Drivers are also identified using a biometric system. These enhancements have increased security, while improving throughput, reducing truck idling time and emissions by 50 percent.
• Cajon Pass – This $100-million project, completed in 2008, added a third mainline track through Cajon Pass north of the city of San Bernardino and into the Los Angeles Basin. Over a period of four years, more than 300 BNSF employees and contractors worked on the Cajon Pass project. In that time, crews moved more than a million tons of earth, placed approximately 42,000 concrete railroad ties and laid more than 30 miles of steel rail. The construction of this track represents the first additional BNSF main track through Cajon Pass since the second line was constructed in 1913, nearly 100 years ago.
• Maintenance – Almost $3.3 billion was spent on the TransCon in the last 10 years to maintain its rail infrastructure ensuring the safe and efficient movement of goods. On average that is almost $705,000 for every mile of the corridor.

With these investments, the TransCon has truly become an engine of American commerce, moving over $162 billion dollars worth of freight in 2009 alone.