CA: Nonprofit urges state AG to investigate decision to close Antioch’s Amtrak Station

In the latest move to keep an Amtrak stop in Antioch, a nonprofit has urged the California Attorney General to investigate the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority for potential violations related to the board’s decision to close the downtown station.

The California Center for Movement Legal Services this week requested Attorney General Rob Bonta investigate SJJPA following the board’s vote in March 2023 to decommission the Antioch-Pittsburg Amtrak station.

The group claims the decision to move the current Amtrak station to Oakley, a smaller and more affluent community, was a “clear injustice” that the SJJPA has breached. SJJPA oversees rail services between Oakland and Bakersfield, including the Antioch station that residents rely on as commuters or passengers.

“This closure will disproportionately impact working-class Californians, most of whom are Black, Indigenous, people of color, who will lose access to essential transit services without any viable alternative,” Margaret DeMatteo, directing attorney for the California Center for Movement Legal Services, wrote in the Sept. 13 letter to Bonta.

DeMatteo noted that SJJPA may have violated several state and federal laws, such as the California Environmental Quality Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. The letter also said that the authority’s failure to provide adequate notice to the public before making its decision violated the state’s public participation laws.

Local officials have said the decision to shutter the Amtrak platform caught them by surprise after the regional board voted 6-1 last year to close the Antioch-Pittsburg stop, citing riders who felt unsafe at the East Contra Costa station. Six miles east, Oakley is building a new transit center that the SJJPA board said can serve the entire area. The platform in Oakley, a city with a population of about 44,000, is expected to be completed later this year.

Ahead of this Friday’s SJJPA board meeting, Antioch Mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe said he and Acting City Manager Kwame Reed plan to visit the train station to devise measures to reinvigorate it, such as improving landscaping. He plans to make a presentation before the transit board and submit a conceptional proposal to the Antioch City Council for approval at its meeting early next month.

“This decision was made outside of us, so I want to make sure the City Council weighs in,” Hernandez-Thorpe said.

On his website last week, Hernandez-Thorpe said he met with SJJPA and the San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission and was assured by both entities that the city is “now on a path to keeping the Antioch Amtrak station open.”

Last Saturday, community members and leaders, including Hernandez-Thorpe and state Assemblymember Tim Grayson, held a rally outside the East County Amtrak station, demanding that the SJJPA halt the proposed closure.

Participants got on trains in Oakland and Richmond and got off in downtown Antioch to join a walking tour.

Tachina Garrett, chairperson of Antioch’s Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Action, accused SJJPA of not engaging with the East Contra Costa community, which she called a “big red flag.”

“We don’t want them to make their own rules. Other cities are losing train stations for no real reason,” Garrett said. “Imagine one day you wake up to go to work and find that the train station doesn’t exist anymore.”

She said the train station is an essential mode of transportation for residents to travel for work. Garrett noted many in Antioch have been dislocated from their homes due to high rent, and taking away a mode of transportation will only exacerbate the problem.
The rail line connects Antioch to Martinez, Richmond and Oakland in one direction, and Sacramento, Stockton and the Central Valley in the other.

Garrett said members will attend the Friday meeting to further pressure the joint power authority to reconsider its decision.

Carter Lavin, co-founder of the Transbay Coalition, said the SJJPA’s unilateral decision without proper public engagement was “deeply insulting and anti-Californian.”

“The joint power of authority is spitting on the face of some 200,000 people living in Pittsburg and Antioch, who are predominantly Black and brown, working-class folks, in favor of replacing it with a station in a smaller community that will have less ridership,” Lavin said.

The SJJPA board meeting will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday in Martinez on the first floor of the Contra Costa County Administration Building, 1025 Escobar St. People can also join the meeting remotely at: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84594500119?pwd=GS2xHg7aikIXEvOffmaAhOxaLbu7bp.1.

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