Oakland – Jack London Square station is a train station in

Jack London Square Jack London Square is an entertainment and business destination on the waterfront of Oakland, California, United States. Named after the author Jack London and owned by the Port of Oakland, it is the home of stores, restaurants, hotels, Amtrak ...

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

, United States. The station is served by Amtrak's ''

Capitol Corridor The ''Capitol Corridor'' is a passenger train route in Northern California operated by Amtrak between San Jose, in the Bay Area, and Auburn, in the Sacramento Valley. The route is named after the two points most trains operate between, San ...

'', ''

Coast Starlight The ''Coast Starlight'' is a passenger train operated by Amtrak on the West Coast of the United States between Seattle and Los Angeles via Portland and the San Francisco Bay Area. The train, which has operated continuously since Amtrak's formati ...

'', and ''

San Joaquins The ''San Joaquins'' is a passenger train service operated by Amtrak in California's San Joaquin Valley. Six daily round trips run between its southern terminus at Bakersfield and Stockton, with onward service to Sacramento (all round trips) an ...

'' trains. Through

Amtrak Thruway Amtrak Thruway is a system of through-ticketed transportation services to connect passengers with areas not served by Amtrak trains. In most cases these are dedicated motorcoach routes, but can also be non-dedicated intercity bus services, transi ...

buses, this station is one of two that serves

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, the other being

Emeryville Emeryville may refer to: * Emeryville, California Emeryville is a city located in northwest Alameda County, California, in the United States. It lies in a corridor between the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, with a border on the shore of San ...

. It is officially named Oakland – Jack London Square / C. L. Dellums Station after C. L. Dellums, co-founder of the

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Founded in 1925, The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) was the first labor organization led by African Americans to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The BSCP gathered a membership of 18,000 passenger railwa ...

. Of the 74 California stations served by Amtrak, Oakland was the tenth-busiest in FY2012, boarding or de-training an average of about 1,142 passengers daily.

History

Interior of Jack London Square station, October 2018

The station opened on May 22, 1995, as a replacement for 16th Street Station, which had been severely damaged in the

1989 Loma Prieta earthquake The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on California's Central Coast on October 17 at local time. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz County, approximately northeast of Santa Cruz on a section of t ...

. A building next to the old station was used as the temporary stop until August 5, 1994. Southern Pacific's downtown station on the north side of 1st Street between Franklin Street and Broadway was a passenger stop until Oakland–San Jose service ended in 1960. With its opening, Jack London Square inherited 16th Street Station's longtime role as the western terminus for the ''

California Zephyr The ''California Zephyr'' is a passenger train operated by Amtrak between Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area (at Emeryville), via Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Reno. At , it is Amtrak's longest daily route, and second-longest overal ...

.'' Nearby

had temporarily been the western terminus from 1994 to 1995. Due to the station's location, westbound trains had to execute a reverse move along

street running A street running train is a train which runs on a track built on public streets. The rails are embedded in the roadway, and the train shares the street with other users, such as pedestrians, cars and cyclists, thus often being referred to as r ...

tracks to reach the wye at

West Oakland West Oakland is a neighborhood situated in the northwestern corner of Oakland, California, United States, situated west of Downtown Oakland, south of Emeryville, and north of Alameda. The neighborhood is located along the waterfront at the Po ...

. For this reason, the ''Zephyr'' was cut back to Emeryville in 1997. The station's official name is "Oakland – Jack London Square / C. L. Dellums Station," named for the surrounding

area, itself named after writer

Jack London John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to ...

, and for C. L. Dellums, a longtime Oakland resident and the co-founder of the

; a statue of Dellums stands outside the station. The station is owned by the

Port of Oakland The Port of Oakland is a major container ship facility located in Oakland, California, in the San Francisco Bay. It was the first major port on the Pacific Coast of the United States to build terminals for container ships. As of 2011 it was the f ...

. The tracks along 1st Street are owned by

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...

Platforms and tracks

San Joaquin at Jack London Square, July 2017

Connections

Jack London Square station is served by

AC Transit AC Transit (Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District) is an Oakland-based public transit agency serving the western portions of Alameda and Contra Costa counties in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. AC Transit also operates "Transbay" ro ...

's route 12 which provides daily service between Downtown Oakland and

West Berkeley West Berkeley is generally the area of Berkeley, California, that lies west of San Pablo Avenue (though sometimes it may also refer to the larger area west of Sacramento Street though this includes Westbrae, Berkeley, California, Westbrae), abutti ...

. The station is the western terminus for the City of Oakland's Broadway Shuttle, a free route on Broadway between Jack London Square and Grand Avenue. Shuttles are operated by AC Transit and operate only on weekdays. Most

buses to and from San Francisco connect at Emeryville, as Jack London Square is further from the

San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, known locally as the Bay Bridge, is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California. As part of Interstate 80 in California, Interstate 80 and the direct road between San Francisco and Oakland ...

. However, Oakland is the San Francisco connection point for passengers on the southern half of the ''Coast Starlight'', as well as for some Thruway buses that run along the coast to Southern California. The station is about from the

Oakland Ferry Terminal The Oakland Ferry Terminal (also known as Clay Street Ferry Terminal and Jack London Square Ferry Terminal) is a ferry terminal on the San Francisco Bay, located in Jack London Square in Oakland, California. History Origins The terminal opened ...

served by the

San Francisco Bay Ferry San Francisco Bay Ferry is a public transit passenger ferry service in the San Francisco Bay, administered by the San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA). In , the system had a ridership of , or about per weekday a ...

to San Francisco and South San Francisco.

References

External links

Oakland–Jack London Square – ''Capitol Corridor''
Amtrak stations in Alameda County, California Bus stations in Alameda County, California

Railway stations in the United States opened in 1995 {{AlamedaCountyCA-railstation-stub