BNSF Pegs 2008 Development Impact

BNSF Railway says the economic development work it did last year, to build up businesses that could feed into its rail network, helped generate about $4 billion worth of investments and over 4,000 new jobs.

Like other big rail lines, it is now laying off workers and idling fleets of equipment amid a severe freight decline, but BNSF said it helped locate 127 new or expanded business facilities along its network last year.

Example include ethanol plants in Texas, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, and California, the carrier said, plus farming related operations in North and South Dakota, Mississippi, New Mexico and Oregon.

It said it aided some steel industry development in New Mexico, Texas, Minnesota, Oregon and Illinois. “Other industry expansions included companies dealing in lumber, construction materials, plastics, paper, machinery and scrap,” BNSF said.

It highlighted one project in particular – a 600-acre site where officials in Upton, Wyo., planned a regional industrial park for various industries, and which the railroad said can “serve as a BNSF premier rail transloading site.”

Vann Cunningham, BNSF assistant vice president for economic development, said that besides bringing new business to Upton, the park project had another ripple effect as it “spurred the development of new housing in the area for the first time in 20 years."