BNSF Railroad Lines in North America with Ownership and Trackage Rights

A subset of the North American Rail Network Lines dataset detailing ownership and trackage rights for the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe (BNSF) Class I railroad. It provides geographic reference for North America's railway system at a scale of 1:24,000 or better within the United States. The dataset covers all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Mexico, and Canada.

Use Cases

• Analyze BNSF ownership and trackage rights data to model freight network capacity and routing.
• Map the geographic distribution of BNSF lines across the United States, Mexico, and Canada for infrastructure planning.
• Integrate passenger, STRACNET, and line type attributes from the NARN database for multimodal transportation studies.
• Use the 1:24,000 scale geographic reference to perform spatial analysis on rail corridor proximity to other infrastructure.

Strengths

• Provides detailed ownership and trackage rights information for a major Class I railroad.
• Geographic data is mapped at a detailed scale of 1:24,000 or better within the United States.
• Spatial coverage includes all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Mexico, and Canada.

Limitations

• Specific row count, column names, and file size are unknown, limiting assessment of analytical scope.
• As a subset of a larger database, it may require joining with the full NARN dataset for complete network context.
• Data freshness is indicated only by a platform update date; the underlying source's temporal coverage is unspecified.

Provenance

Source

Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), part of the U.S. Department of Transportation/Bureau of Transportation Statistics (USDOT/BTS) National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD).

Collection Method

Derived from the North American Rail Network (NARN) Lines dataset.

Freshness

Last updated on the platform on 2025-03-01.

Geography

North America, covering all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Mexico, and Canada.