Antioch’s Amtrak platform has been slated for closure, with the rail service moving to Oakley, a city with less than half of the population of Antioch in a move that local officials say blindsided them.

The San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority, which oversees the passenger rail service between Oakland and Bakersfield, has said that riders do not feel safe at the Antioch station, and Oakley is building a new transit center only six miles to the east that can serve the entire area.

The SJJPA board voted 6-1 at a recent meeting to decommission the Antioch stop in favor of Oakley, whose train platform and parking lot are slated to be completed by late 2024.

It was a move that caught Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe by surprise. Thorpe said at one point board members agreed to postpone a decision on whether to decommission the Antioch platform, but later in that same meeting they approved the closure.

Reached later, Antioch Councilwoman Monica Wilson, who has been on the council for 12 years and sits on local transit boards, said she also was totally unaware of the plan to shut down Antioch’s stop.

Thorpe meanwhile said that to say the move blindsided him was “putting it lightly.”

“The first vote, it died; It didn’t get enough support,” he said. “There were people who actually agreed with me and said no.”

But in a subsequent vote after a meeting break, two board members changed their minds and the deal was done, he said.

Tamika Smith, director of rail service for the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority, said there were 69 police calls from January 2021 to December 2022 at Antioch’s stop along the waterfront, where a number of homeless residents live.

But Thorpe said things have changed around the station. “We literally cleaned up the area,” he said in a phone interview, noting he didn’t know the planned Oakley station would replace Antioch’s stop. He also said Antioch has done a lot to find services for the homeless — including a soon-to-open motel that will become transitional housing for the unhoused.

Antioch agreed to demolish its train station in 2019 after a homeless person was found camping on its roof, kicking in $100,000 toward the $344,000 cost to tear it down. Amtrak officials said later someone stole an $11,000 wheelchair lift from the train platform in Antioch, forcing passengers in wheelchairs in that city to board trains in either Martinez or Stockton.

And while Amtrak officials said Antioch’s two former city managers knew about the plans to relocate to Oakley, an update from then-City Manager Ron Bernal in 2019 indicated he thought officials had other plans.

“The vision for this important entry to downtown Antioch is to create an inviting and attractive plaza for people to wait and disembark from Amtrak trains,” Bernal, who has since retired, wrote in a city report. “San Joaquin Rail Authority has told us they are planning on running a commuter train from the Central Valley at 8:30 a.m. each workday with stops in Antioch.”

Reached by phone, Bernal said he never approved the decommissioning of the Antioch stop and he told the Rail Authority officials as much.

“It’s absurd to think that the city manager could decommission a train station,” he said.

“In fact, I’ve always been working toward improving that station so that it would be a better stop for Antioch because I do believe it’s a huge amenity to our downtown and to our residents,” Bernal added. “So, my efforts have always been in the vein of improving it so that it would be better never to tear down buildings to decommission it.”

San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority officials didn’t return emails seeking clarification or comment. Bernal indicated he also had not gotten a response to his emails.

Thorpe called the move to decommission the stop “unfair,” and said while he knew about the Oakley platform being built, he was not aware it would replace the stop at Antioch, which has 120,000 residents, more than double Oakley’s population of 45,000.

The city of Antioch owns and is responsible for maintaining the land and platform, but the BNSF Railway owns the track.

Contra Costa County Supervisor Diane Burgis of Oakley, who also attended the meeting, said Oakley has been working for years to develop its train station, investing some $6 million in the project, and the stop makes sense from a regional perspective.

Following the meeting, Peter Myers, Burgis’ communications director, said Oakley is creating a transit center and a train station with full capabilities and plenty of parking for residents coming from other cities in the region.

Mayor Kevin Romick, from left, Paul Herman of the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority, Vice Mayor Sue Higgins, and city of Oakley associate engineer Jason Kabalin participate in the ceremonial groudnbreaking of the new Amtrak train platform in Oakley.
Mayor Kevin Romick, from left, Paul Herman of the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority, Vice Mayor Sue Higgins, and city of Oakley associate engineer Jason Kabalin participate in the ceremonial groundbreaking of the new Amtrak train platform in Oakley in 2020. 

The new 700-foot-long train station platform will be behind Main Street between Norcross Lane and Second Street and will include 300 parking spaces. Once it’s finished sometime in late 2024 and the stop is activated, commuters would be able to get from downtown Oakley to downtown Oakland in less than an hour, Amtrak officials said.

But Thorpe said parking was not an issue in favoring Oakley over Antioch, as Antioch’s city hall is a block away and offers plenty of parking. Besides, he said, the “goal is to get people out of their cars, particularly in the last mile.”

“That’s why On-Demand, Tri MyRide (corner-to-corner, shared shuttle services) — these different apps we’re pushing toward — it’s because we don’t want people parking in parking lots,” he added.

The new station will be less than six miles from the Antioch stop, a distance that disqualifies having both stations because of the inability to get the trains up to speed before they have to slow down again for a stop, according to Myers.

But Myers said new technology could be on the horizon that would allow the trains to accelerate faster and make it possible to have both stops “somewhere down the line.”

The Oakley stop meanwhile will go into service as soon as the new platform is completed, after which Antioch will lose its service.