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On Tuesday, CG/LA Infrastructure L.L.C. released a preliminary list of the top 100 North American infrastructure projects. The total estimated cost of the projects — many of which involve freight and passenger rail — is $220 billion. The projects could create 3.3 million direct jobs and about 10 million total jobs over the next four to five years, according to CG/LA Infrastructure, an infrastructure project identification and branding firm.

The projects cover the following infrastructure sectors: airports (totaling $7.1 billion in costs); electricity ($49.2 billion); high-speed rail/Northeast Corridor ($32 billion); oil and gas ($12.6 billion); ports and logistics ($7.3 billion); renewable energy ($23 billion); surface transportation ($42 billion); urban mass transit ($39.1 billion); and water and wastewater ($8 billion). Projects were selected from a list of 2,000 candidates based on a project's business opportunity, productivity and competitiveness creation, job generation and "green" aspects.

Freight-rail and port projects that made the list include:
• BNSF Railway Co.’s Gardner, Kan., intermodal facility;
• the province of Manitoba’s Centreport Canada project;
• Kansas City Southern de México S.A. de C.V.’s Palm Island rail platform in Michoacan, Mexico;
• CSX Corp.’s National Gateway intermodal corridor;
• Norfolk Southern Corp.’s Crescent Corridor intermodal route;
• BNSF’s and Union Pacific Railroad’s Tower 55 project in Fort Worth, Texas;
• Canadian Pacific’s, Borealis Infrastructure’s and the Windsor Port Authority’s “Continental Rail Gateway” in Ontario;
• an inland port in Guanajuato, Mexico;
• dredging projects at the ports of Miami and Savannah, Ga.; and
• a container terminal at the Port of Lázaro Cárdenas in Mexico.

Passenger-rail projects include:
• the SunRail commuter-rail project in Florida;
• phase two of the Metro Rail Red Line expansion in Austin, Texas;
• the Central Corridor light-rail line in the Twin Cities;
• San Francisco’s Central Subway;
• Sound Transit’s East Link project in Seattle;
• the second phase of the Exposition Line in Los Angeles;
• the Honolulu Rail Transit project in Hawaii;
• Ottawa, Canada’s light-rail project;
• the Sheppard East light-rail line and Spadina subway extension in Toronto;
• South Metrolink extensions in St. Louis;
• Frontlines 2015 project in Salt Lake City, Utah;
• Detroit’s Woodward Avenue light-rail project;
• the second phase of the Dulles Corridor Metrorail project in Virginia;
• MTA Long Island Rail Road’s East Side Access project;
• Bay Area Rapid Transit's East Contra Costa extension in San Francisco; and
• Atlanta’s streetcar project.