San Francision Rail Terminal...

Because there is no rail bridge across the bay into San Francisco. Except for the coast line trains, all the Southern Pacific, Western Pacific and Santa Fe trains into the San Francisco Bay Area terminated in Oakland. There was ferry service across the bay to the Ferry Building in San Francisco.  It was right at the end of Market street and both the MUNI and the Market Street Railway streetcars ran to the Ferry Building. SP ended ferry service in 1958 and transported SF bound passengers across the Bay by motor bus. Amtrak made the Coast Daylight and Shasta Daylight into a single train and routed it by way of Oakland.  Rerouting the Coast Daylight to Oakland ended main line passenger train service to San Francisco. 

Amtrak trains to Chicago, LA, Portland, and down the San Joaquin valley to Bakersfield all went to Oakland 16th street station.  This station was damaged beyond repair by the 1989 earthquake and Amtrak built a new station in Emeryville.  This location has better access to the Bay Bridge for the bus service to San Francisco.  There are no plans to change this arrangement. If High Speed Rail is built between San Francisco and LA it is to cross from the San Joaquin valley to the Bay Area south of San Jose.  It then would go up the Peninsula to San Francisco.  There is a lot of opposition to running high speed rail on the Peninsula and this may never happen.  

Mike

The main reason is the San Francisco Bay itself and the lack of train tracks running across the bay to the eastern shore. There is one train bridge about 35 miles south of San Francisco which parallels the Dumbarton Bridge (1 of 8 bridges crossing the SF Bay) but it seldom is/was used  for freight.

The CalTrain station in downtown San Francisco, which you mentioned, is the terminus for the commuter line CalTrain. It is also the old  Southern Pacific Route which ran from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I am a native San Franciscan and the city, in the "South of Market area", primarily industrial, was well served by Santa Fe, Western Pacific and Southern Pacific.  The remnants of tracks are still present but as the area is being developed they are being torn up. Barges were used to move freight cars across the bay into Oakland. One of those piers is still standing about a 1/2 mile from ATT Park (Home of the Giants)

It its hey day the only rail terminus in San Francisco was the Southern Pacific Depot. The current station is a a block west of the the original station. If it were standing today, the station would be about 500 feet north of ATT Park on Third Street. Even back then buses for the Western Pacific, Union Pacific and Santa Fe were used to transport passengers to San Francisco.

Getting back to your original question, it is simply not cost effective to run a train from Oakland to San Francisco and back. 

Very interesting info.  So a little more info on past freight into San Fran and the current situation? Does San Fran not have active ports that need rail or intermodal...or is the intermodal terminal inland and the containers trucked.  What about the spurs that enter the city streets?  Still used?

Maybe they will build a rail bridge across the bay again.   I can't see a negative impact of high speed rail on the peninsula.  Its quiet and clean...def less pollution than all the cars.

Could Amtrak not run a couple of trains down the commuter line and connect in with the main line down South?

There is very little freight service into San Francisco.  Union Pacific does a few runs into "The City" for the few customers there are.  There is a lumber company that still has wood delivered.  There is a big contstuction job in the Mission Bay where "dirty dirt" (contaminated) is being shipped out from the area.  Here are some rare pics of UP freight trains in San Francisco.

The only terminal is the CalTrain depot located at 4th and Townsend Streets.

Matt

You should really take a look at Google maps to better understand the geography of the area. Going around the south end of the bay would add at least 90 minutes from Oakland.

Crossing the Bay Bridge takes about 5 minutes by car. Building a railroad bridge doesn't make economic sense, in addition to the engineering difficulties caused by the height needed to keep shipping lanes open as well as where to put trains on the San Francisco side.

Mike,

All shipping and intermodal rail is handled out of Oakland. There is no active shipping out of San Francisco. Those days are long gone. As far as building a new bridge for rail, I don't see that happening. A portion of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge which was damaged during the 1989 Earthquake took 20 years to complete because of politics. 

Where are the last 3 pics taken?  Is the last one the main line or a branch?

There is a Train to San Francisco from Oakland, under the Bay.

It is called BART.

There are buses from Emeryville Station to the BART station nearby.

BART and Amtrak "share"  stations in Richmond and East Oakland, but some trains do not stop there due to high crime rate.

There is talk (which is cheap) of Bart type trains across the Golden Gate or a second Bay Bridge crossing.

Mike

I just found a link for you which hopefully will put into perspective how passenger and freight operations were organized in San Francisco.

http://wx4.org/to/foam/sp/san_fran/cisco.html

Thanks...very interesting!!!  Looks like San Fran likes to demolish their classic depots.

It was a classic depot but it was only temporary. In it's final days it was seismically unsound and literally falling apart. When it was torn down, the days of classic training travel were long gone. It was too big for its purpose; commuter station. 

When I grew up in the "City" (San Francisco) the Southern Pacific was the main player. San Francisco housed the SP headwaters and employee hospital.