The station is served by Amtrak's Capitol Corridor, Coast Starlight, and San Joaquins trains.

The station is located in the southeastern part of the Jack London Square district of Oakland, California.

[8] The northwest half of the 16,000-square-foot (1,500 m2) building is a 5,000-square-foot (460 m2) waiting room; the remaining portion has two floors of offices and baggage space.

[8][9][6] Two wooden benches from 16th Street station originally sat among modern seating in the waiting room.

[9] A footbridge with elevators at east end crosses the tracks and Embarcadero West adjacent to the station building.

However, Oakland is the northern end of Thruway route 17, which connects to the Pacific Surfliner at Santa Barbara.

[3] The station does not have direct connections to other regional transit; it is about 2,400 feet (730 m) east of the Oakland Ferry Terminal served by the San Francisco Bay Ferry and 2,200 feet (670 m) southwest of Lake Merritt station served by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART).

[15][16][17]: 17  In March 1989, the Port of Oakland won a $3.1 million state grant to fund part of the cost of a new station.

[24][25] Groundbreaking for the Jack London Square station was held on October 28, 1992 – one day after a "lease signing" ceremony in Emeryville.

[32][33] In October 1993, bids for the station building came in $1.2 million higher than expected; the Port made cosmetic changes to reduce the cost and rebid the project.

[28][34] At that time, the Port also announced that the station would be named after C. L. Dellums, a longtime Oakland resident and the co-founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

[9][41]) SP allowed the Zephyr to be extended to Oakland because it would make the reverse move at less-crowded times.

[45] The California Zephyr was cut back to Emeryville on October 27, 1997 – both to avoid the reverse move, and because the addition of mail and express cars earlier that year had made the train too long for the station's platform.

[17]: 23  In June 2004, the city approved a nine-building development in the Jack London Square district.

It included a parking garage replacing the short-term packing lot, with a footbridge across the tracks connecting it to a public market.

[50]: 15  A 2014 vision plan for the Capitol Corridor proposed several possible new alignments for passenger trains to avoid the street running through Jack London Square.