The Union Pacific Railroad, BNSF Railway and several shortline railroads will accept an area map to document the area needed by the project in place of a metes and bounds property description. The area map is comprised of a CAD drawing, tied into state plane coordinates, or a latitude/longitude, and used by the affected railroad for their GIS mapping.

The railroad will generally only allow an area needed for the proposed crossing. This would include edge of road to edge of road for at-grade crossings and edge of sidewalk to edge of sidewalk for pathway projects. For bridge projects, an additional 20-foot-wide strip outside of the edge of bridge will be the limit.