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Originally Posted by wburg

I had a different sense of the role of the historic depot. There was a plan to move the depot (if you scroll back through the years you can read posts about it here on SSP) but it was scratched in favor of leaving the depot in place and making it the entrance to a larger intermodal complex.

If you measure the distance from the historic depot entrance and compare it to the distance between entrance and tracks to Los Angeles Union Station, they're about the same. When you walk into LA Union Station, the Amtrak counter is nowhere in sight--you have to walk through the grand lobby down a concourse before you hit the Amtrak counter, connections to buses, and a cluster of restaurants and shops, then the underground walkways to the tracks. Stairs descend to the LAMTA Red Line, and on the far end of the tracks is a bus terminal for local and express buses.

What does that have to do with Sacramento? Los Angeles is the busiest train station west of the Mississippi, with about 1.7 million riders--and Sacramento is the second busiest with 1.2 million. No other Amtrak depots even come close, and considering the plans to expand Capitol Corridor and San Joaquin trains, we may get closer to Los Angeles' numbers. So in order to fit all our planned transit functions, we need more space for a bigger transit complex. Don't forget expanded light rail lines, streetcar, the need for a safe navigable bike route from downtown to Old Sacramento, and eventual relocation of Greyhound into this transit complex (the building on Richards is temporary.)

I kind of smirk at the idea of the historic depot being used as a farmer's market like the one in Napa--I'd think of it more like the Ferry Building in San Francisco. Like the Sacramento depot, the Ferry Building was primarily a building for transportation, between San Francisco's streetcar lines and ferries, and it still serves that function, with the public market/retail experience becoming part of that function in addition to being a destination in its own right.

Los Angeles union station also serves other functions--I took the train home from there last weekend, and there was a big public festival happening alongside the depot with live bands and thousands of people. Formerly vacant spaces outside the depot (some were old industrial facilities, tracks taken out of service, some with interim parking lot use) were developed into office buildings (like the LAMTA building) and condo/residential uses.

Think of the future plan for the Amtrak depot as more like a modern airport concourse--lined with small shops and restaurants for the convenience of travelers, information about local amenities and tourist destinations, and places for travelers to relax while waiting for departure or arrival. The difference with a modern train station is that it doesn't have to be a hermetically sealed TSA envelope like an airport--it can be a connected and living part of downtown. That's the main idea--back in 2009 I told the Council that we didn't need to move the depot because we had learned to think bigger since making the initial decision, and would need the space for a big-city train station with the historic depot as its grand entrance.

Thats true about the amtrak numbers but the metrolink numbers make the amtrak numbers seem puny!!! Metrolink basically revitalized that place along with the gold line.