What’s next for 100-year-old Sacramento train station? New projects are in the works

The Abridged version:

• Sacramento Valley Station recently marked its 100-year anniversary as the city’s main passenger railroad station.
• While the station is one of the most active on the West Coast, ridership has dipped and storefronts remain vacant.
• City leaders are hoping a wave of momentum from the incoming Railyards development will breathe new life into the station.

---

Sacramento Valley Station is the second busiest train station on this side of the Mississippi, but it doesn’t always appear that way.

The station’s 100th birthday arrived last week, and leaders say it’s on the cusp of catching fresh momentum from the nearby Railyards development.

Historic brick architecture towers overhead at the station’s home at Third and J streets, and thousands of train riders are greeted by meticulously restored murals, light fixtures and glass panels that adorn the station’s main lobby.

At the same time, once bustling shops and dining options remain slim. Attempts at filling city-leased office spaces have had mixed results.

The city of Sacramento is looking to change that, however.

“There’s some big moves on the table,” said Greg Taylor, project manager with the city who oversees Sacramento Valley Station. The station is owned by the city, and its main tenant is Amtrak, which operates more than 30 trains out of Sacramento each day.

With billions in new development dollars arriving at the incoming Railyards District, just to the north of the station, the city of Sacramento is looking to completely change how people interact with Sacramento Valley Station.

Century-old pieces of the past remain

The debut of Sacramento Valley Station on Feb. 27, 1926, arrived after decades of attempting to dredge and fill a lake that was previously on the site.

The station was also preceded by two previous hubs for railroad passengers, the wooden Arcade Station that once sat at G and Third Streets, and another station that previously filled the Old Spaghetti Factory site at J and 19th streets.

With the new Sacramento Valley Station, though, the Southern Pacific Railroad wanted to bring a “grand entrance” to Sacramento, said local historian William Berg.

“They wanted to build a depot that would be more modern and more integrated into downtown Sacramento,” Berg said.

Many of the original fixtures can still be seen by train riders passing through the station. The original wooden benches remain in the lobby, though the heat radiators at the center are no longer in operation.

The city purchased the building from Union Pacific Railroad in 2006, and the site underwent a $33 million rehabilitation project that finished in 2017.

Parts of the walls were also restored at that time to give a similar appearance to the original paint. All but two of the brass sconces are also original, Taylor said.

Ridership numbers remain lower than pre-pandemic days

Over the last 10 years, Sacramento Valley Station has fallen from the nation’s seventh-busiest train station to the 15th busiest in 2025, according to ridership data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

The station also remains the second-busiest hub for Amtrak on the West Coast, behind Los Angeles, and saw 764,100 riders across fiscal year 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Those figures are still below the station’s pre-pandemic days, when the number of annual riders peaked above 1 million for several years.

The city rents to a few businesses, and Amtrak has a large section of offices set up where a historic restaurant used to be.

Spots for new shops, offices and an event space on the third floor are currently vacant, according to the city. The city is still seeking tenants for about half of the 25,000-square-feet of space that it owns, according to leasing documents. Those tenants would join the sandwich shop, law firm and bail bonds agency that currently fill some of the site.

Railyards-focused projects in the works

A slew of new projects in the works are poised to change how visitors and locals alike interact with Sacramento Valley Station.

“The Sacramento Valley Station site has suffered from limited access,” states a city planning document.

The incoming Railyards developments are poised to open up the site, which has long been bordered by freeways and drainage basins. The city is looking to add more pedestrian-focused infrastructure in particular over the next year.

“The intention with the new station is no vehicles,” Taylor said.

Currently underway is a new walkway and central shops area that would connect to the heart of the entertainment district planned at the Railyards. The city has funding to expand the tunnel currently near the train platforms and extend it into the plaza that would hold the incoming 3,500-person music venue.

Public transit boost seen

The station is also poised to fill the expanse of land between the main station building and the train platforms, according to Taylor. Storm drain improvements, funded by state grants, are set to open up that area for development for the first time, he said.

Other parts of the city’s public transit infrastructure would see a boost, too. A broader bus terminal in the works would also add 18 new bus bays. The planned Downtown streetcar route is expected to connect the station to Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento. The streetcar project is on track to break ground later this year, according to Sacramento Regional Transit.

The proposed city budget calls for funding a new economic development director position to focus specifically on spurring the number of businesses in the station, Taylor said.

Further down the line, the station is also looking at removing some of the Interstate 5 freeway on ramp, which would open up access. Those changes, however, currently remain unfunded.

Felicia Alvarez is a reporter at Abridged covering accountability. She’s called Sacramento home since 2015 and has reported on government, health care and breaking news topics for both local and national news outlets.