A night at Oakland’s train and bus depots finds Thanksgiving travelers longing for family connections

The Thanksgiving holiday can’t come soon enough for some people this year. For students who live away from home, it will be the first time they’ve seen their family in months. For professionals who’ve built a life far from the Town but are staying here for the week, it’s a way to rekindle that Oakland part of their identity. 

On Monday, we visited the city’s bus and train depots and met a family from Chicago, several young students, a special education teacher, and many more. Most were excited and optimistic about their break and looked forward to better, less turbulent times. 

According to the Transportation Security Administration and the American Automobile Association, this week is expected to be the busiest Thanksgiving travel season on record. More than 80 million people will travel, with the vast majority driving, 71 million in all; nearly 6 million flying; and a little more than 2 million using buses, trains, or cruises. According to historical data, most of those people will be traveling today. 

Amtrak has recovered from losing almost half of its ridership during the first year of the pandemic, when it dropped to nearly 17 million riders. Last year, the agency said it had returned to service 28.3 million riders. In the West, the Capitol Corridor route, which many Oakland Amtrak riders were on this week, has also seen increased demand of late.

Most people we spoke to this week considered the train or bus to be a better, less chaotic option than flying. 

Jessica, a fourth-year UC Berkeley neuroscience student traveling to her family home in Southern California, said that she thought it was more relaxing and chill to take the bus, even if it took longer to get there. We talked to her briefly as she was about to catch the 9:35 p.m. FlixBus at a stop next to the West Oakland BART station. The FlixBus travels to Los Angeles from Oakland twice a day, including overnight service. Jessica told us she was going straight to the FlixBus stop at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles for a ride length of about 7.5 hours. The German-owned company took over the American Greyhound bus network three years ago. 

“I’m probably going to stay to work here [in the Bay Area] when I graduate. I have a job here, and I will probably still take this commute with the bus,” she said. “I know that taking the plane is probably easier, but I like longer rides. I don’t mind it. It’s comfortable. I don’t like the plane.”

Jessica said she likes the convenience of pulling up at the local bus stop and arriving at her hometown a day later. She likes the price, too. The bus costs only $37 if a ticket is bought beforehand. 

People who took the train, like Marco Garcia, also liked that they were saving a substantial amount of money to travel during the holiday. 

The recent Cal Poly Humboldt graduate was at the train station in Jack London Square on his way back home to Fresno. He had been visiting his college girlfriend in Hayward and had taken the train because driving or flying from the Fresno airfield would have been much costlier. The Amtrak train for this ride costs $26. Garcia also liked taking the train because he didn’t have to worry about piercing a tire or dealing with the rain. He didn’t love traveling through the busy Bay Area.

“There’s a lot of people here, and there’s a lot of traffic [compared with Fresno],” he said. Over there it’s calm, “and you can see the orchards and people working in the fields.”

Garcia received a bachelor’s degree in criminology and hopes to become a probation officer within a few years. He became interested in that profession after working as a Resident Advisor in college and enjoying the responsibility of guiding people in their lives, especially those from complex communities and circumstances. 

Regarding Thanksgiving traditions, Garcia said his family didn’t do anything especially different but enjoyed getting the family of 20 together for a big meal. He said his parents were undocumented immigrants from the Mexican state of Michoacán.

A 20-year-old named Noah, who takes adult education classes in San Francisco, sat quietly a few rows away from Marco at the spacious Jack London station. Noah was waiting for the train to Sacramento, wearing a gray and red hoodie and holding his hardside luggage. He said he would help this week at his family’s gaming store, which they’ve had for generations. While his family tends to see Thanksgiving as a traditional holiday where they share their thanks about the year past, Noah said he tended not to participate because of the holiday’s origins around the colonizing of the Americas. 

“A few years ago, I found out that Thanksgiving [goes back to the time] when they slaughtered Native people, and that offends me because I’m Native. I think it’s fucked up,” he said. “I used to celebrate it, but I said, ‘I’m done.’”

We also caught a traveler near the end of his day’s journey, preparing for even more travel later in the week. 

Monterey teacher Milgene Carbonel had taken a train to Oakland—his first train ride—and was on his way to Antioch. He said he was “a little” bit afraid of the big machine but still enjoyed the ride once he settled in. He especially liked watching the scenery go by for a few hours, even on a stormy Monday. 

Carbonel, a special education teacher who works with autistic children in elementary school, said his job was challenging but rewarding. He taught the same program for eight years in his native Philippines. “It’s the same, teaching kids here and in the Philippines. You just need to give them the love and the security that they need.” 

But Carbonel said he appreciated having the week off to focus on himself and his friend. “I think I deserve it!” he said. 

Carbonel said that even though he was a fully credentialed teacher in his country, his four years of work here allowed him to attain only a partial credential through the teacher exchange program he was a part of. In the summer of 2026, he will have to return to the Philippines for a few years to once again apply for an American green card.

Carbonel said that once he reaches Antioch, he will travel to Southern California in a car with his friend and go to Disneyland for the first time. On Thursday, they will have a traditional U.S. Thanksgiving meal of turkey and fixings somewhere in the warm and busy Los Angeles area. 

“Is it warmer?” he asked. “Thanks for sharing that! I didn’t know.” 

At the far end of the seating area in the Jack London station, we found the Corwin family from Chicago. They were on their way to Mariposa, California, a city ravaged by fires a few years ago. Mariposa is the dad’s hometown, and he had arranged for the family to take their current journey after analyzing the time and cost it would take to fly directly into Central California from Chicago. They had flown into Fresno’s airport in the past, but it wasn’t worth it anymore. 

“It takes about the same amount of time, but it’s way cheaper, and we like the train,” he said. On today’s trip, the parents worked, relaxed, and watched Christmas movies while the daughter drew, wrote, and did other “creative endeavors.” The family has been making this trip a lot recently. 

At the time we spoke, the Corwins were on hour 14 of their travel day, with an additional two-and-a-half-hour train ride to Merced and an hour’s ride to Mariposa left to go. Still, they appeared happy to have made the journey.

“The train is more calm than flying on an airplane,” the mom said. She said that O’Hare in Chicago was very busy and that she could not sleep on the plane because it was so crowded and noisy, with various announcements and hollering at all hours.

“It’s nice to have all this public transit available,” she said. 

As the Corwin family left, Greg Ledbetter, a San Francisco resident involved in the city’s recent Dream Keeper Initiative, arrived from Sacramento on the Capitol Corridor line. While waiting for a ride to the city, he smoked a cigarette and pinched his dark overcoat shut to keep the cold out. He had gone to see his nephew and niece in California’s capital over the weekend. He planned to take the same train back to Sacramento for Thanksgiving and planned to stay there until Sunday.

“I love Amtrak. It’s great traveling,” he said. Ledbetter said he also goes to Pittsburg, California, on BART during the holidays to meet with loved ones. 

An older man named Akira Sebe soon sidled up near Ledbetter. As the rain began to fall again, he was holding a large white plastic bag of possessions, looking cold with his short gray and white hair sticking up. He said he had also traveled from Sacramento to stay with his daughter in Alameda for the holidays. 

Sebe said it had been 15 years since he’d taken the train because he had always driven in. But he’s getting on in age—he’s 81 years old—and his daughter was worried about his safety.

“She told me to take the train!” he said, laughing, as he waited to be picked up in a warm car by his daughter.