Rail as an alternative to the Oakland International Airport expansion 

California high speed rail will emit fewer greenhouse gas emissions than aviation, and most airport destinations are already reachable via today’s Amtrak service. 

By James Johnston, 8/4/23

Introduction 

We are in a climate crisis: the world just experienced the hottest July on record yet at 1.5 °C above pre-industrial temperatures.i  For many Californians, this isn’t just an abstract issue: climate change is a contributing factor to the increase in wildfire throughout the state.  Homes and communities are destroyed, as well as natural wonders cherished the world over.  For example, groves of ancient giant sequoia trees that thousands of Californians once camped under are now dead, just another statistic as part of the 13% to 19% of the world’s giant sequoia trees killed by fire in only the last 3 years.ii  These are irreplaceable losses. 

The State of California has recognized this problem and has set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 85% below 1990 levels.iii  The City of Oakland has gone farther and declared a climate emergency, setting forth a net zero goal for the year 2045.iv 

Aviation contributes to this problem.  Every flight at Oakland International Airport (OAK) contributes significant greenhouse gases and localized air pollution.  Every flight is therefore directly responsible in a small part for destroying somebody’s home from fire or flood, degrading favorite locations in nature, threatening the world’s future water and food supply, or even contributing to someone’s death due to air pollution.  While solutions like aircraft electrification, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), and/or hydrogen might someday be able to enable sustainable air travel, they are likely many decades into the future and are unlikely to arrive soon enough to help with the current climate crisis.v 

Meanwhile, the Port of Oakland proposes to expand OAK by building 16 new gates, a 55% increase, to accommodate a significant growth in air travel.vi  Barring that, they propose to set up a busing infrastructure that will increase air traffic by an equivalent amount using the existing terminal gates over the coming decadesvii.  No alternative is considered that would hold air travel, and therefore climate-warming greenhouse gases, to the current levels today.viii  This flies in opposition to the declared net zero climate goals of the City of Oakland. 

However, avoiding aviation doesn’t mean we can’t sustainably travel to many of our favorite destinations.  This article takes a closer look at the passenger flights utilizing Oakland International Airport to demonstrate that approximately 90% of the flights departing from OAK go to destinations that can also be reached via today’s Amtrak service.  In future years, electrified California High Speed Rail and Brightline West service powered by renewable energy will also reach many of the most popular destinations and could replace approximately 46% of the flights utilizing OAK today. 

We know how to electrify ground transportation with renewable energy using today’s proven technology: it is only a matter of political will to build it.  Other countries around the world are already doing this.  It doesn’t require aspirational technology that might not be deployed at scale for the next few decades. 

Methodology 

The flight departures listed on Oakland International Airport’s website for August 4, 2023, were individually examined to see whether there is comparable rail/Amtrak service available.ix  Therefore, this examines the same flights you would see if you examined the flight status televisions inside the airport on that date.  For every listed flight, the following information was gathered: 

• A check for existing Amtrak service was made by going to Amtrak.com and searching for travel from the Oakland Jack London Square Station (OKJ) to a station near the original destination airport.  The shortest travel time and type of route segments were then noted.  For travel involving the California Zephyr train, Emeryville (EMY) was used as the origin station instead, since that train does not serve OKJ. 

• The route was checked against the California High Speed Rail interactive map of future service to see whether high speed rail could yield future service improvements to existing Amtrak service.x 

• The route was also checked against the Brightline West map of future service.xi 

• Finally, the route was compared with the Amtrak Connects US Corridor Vision for future Amtrak service improvements.xii  This document was published by Amtrak in June, 2021 and proposes the most likely future locations and routes where Amtrak service could be extended. 

The results were then grouped by destination and sorted by number of flights.  Every Amtrak itinerary was classified by the duration: < 12 hours, < 24 hours, and > 24 hours, and flagged with potential service improvements that can be brought by California High Speed Rail, Brightline West, and Amtrak itself. 

There are limitations of this method because only one day of flight departures was considered.  It is assumed that if these limitations were addressed it would not significantly affect the results; however, further investigation was not done due to time limitations preparing this report: 

• Flights that do not operate daily are therefore not fully considered: they would not be considered at all or would be incorrectly assumed to be daily.  For example, some flights serving less-popular destinations might only operate on days surrounding the weekend. 

• Any seasonal variations in flight patterns are also not considered. 

• Only departures were examined.  It is assumed that an additional consideration of arrivals would not significantly change the results. 

• Flights related to general/private aviation or cargo flights are not considered.  If a flight status isn’t published on the passenger terminal televisions, it isn’t considered. 

Next, the number of existing airport gates is compared with the planned number of airport gates after the expansion.  The assumption being made here is that the number of new gates can be used as a rough proxy for the planned increase of air traffic.  This is a reasonable assumption because the draft EIR states in the project’s Objective 2 that the proposal will maintain “industry standard levels of service” while accommodating planned increases in air traffic.xiii  In other words, they want to build more gates to accommodate more traffic so that the existing gates do not become more crowded. 

Results 

The table summarizes the flight departures for Oakland International Airport on August 4, 2023, along with comparable rail service, if any. 

Each leg of Amtrak service is delimited by a comma.  If multiple reasonable Amtrak routes exist for a section, they are delimited with a slash.  Segments can be grouped together with parenthesis.  For example, “Coast Starlight/(San Joaquins, bus), Texas Eagle” means that you could take either the Coast Starlight train to Los Angeles, or take the combination of the San Joaquins train and a bus to Los Angeles.  You’d then transfer to the Texas Eagle train in Los Angeles. 

The table is graphically summarized in the pie chart at the top of this report. 

Based on the table below, we can see that 90% of the flights are serving destinations already served by Amtrak today.  Furthermore, 46% of these flights serve destinations that will also be served with planned high-speed rail, such as common destinations like Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Burbank, and Orange County.  Another 10% of the flights serve destinations whose future Amtrak itineraries could utilize planned high-speed rail to shorten the trip.

Next, we note that the existing airport has 29 gates, and the draft EIR proposes 45 total gates, for a net increase of 16 gates.  This works out so that 36% of the post-expansion gates are new additions.

Discussion 

The results demonstrate that if popular flights were completely mode-shifted from planes to California High Speed Rail, enough airport gate capacity would become unused in an amount like what the proposed airport expansion would provide.  In other words, the airport expansion does not need to be built to accommodate forecasted growth in the traveling public if everyone going to Southern California and Las Vegas took high-speed rail instead. 

Of course, such a mode shift cannot happen overnight.  Amtrak does not currently have the capacity to serve every passenger at Oakland International Airport.  When fully constructed and at the maximum theoretical capacity, California High Speed Rail will unlock a considerable passenger capacity of 7,560 passengers per hour – enough to handle every current and forecasted passenger at OAKxiv – but it does not exist yet.  Consider that a single CA HSR train will hold 900 passengers – the same as up to 7 airplanes used for intrastate travel!  And CA HSR will be advanced enough that a train can leave every few minutes. 

A slower transition plan could therefore look something like this: 

1. The Port of Oakland holds the number of daily departures at the airport to today’s levels, without further growing the number of passengers or flights. 

1. Amtrak’s capacity is gradually increased as an alternative to adding additional flights.  For example, additional trains could be added to the existing San Joaquins train as an alternative to adding new flights to Los Angeles.  Existing flights to Los Angeles could also be gradually removed to make room for flights to more distant locations as needed. 

1. Per the 2022 CA HSR business plan, the Initial Operating Segment of high-speed rail can be used to reduce the travel time for San Joaquins passengers.xv  Passengers would ride the San Joaquins to Merced, transfer to high-speed rail, and then transfer to the existing bus system in Bakersfield. 

1. CA HSR continues to expand.  The bus from Bakersfield to Los Angeles is eventually replaced with another high-speed rail segment.  Similarly, service from Merced to San Francisco begins. 

1. California High Speed Rail is fully built out, and most flights from Oakland to Los Angeles and other Southern California airports are subsequently eliminated.  Existing airport capacity is now used for new flights serving farther distances.  East Bay passengers who wish to travel south could travel to San Francisco or San Jose via BART to directly board CA HSR or continue to utilize San Joaquins or future Altamont Corridor Express (ACE) service to Merced.