I really wish I could take the Coast Starlight -> San Joaquins without a bus transfer. Coast Starlight's scheduled arrival in Sacramento is at 6:48am, the only departing San Joaquins train for the day leaves 20 minutes earlier. Meaning if you need to take SJ you have to wait, take a bus, wait some more, and catch up with another SJ train 3 hours later. I really wish they would run more trains from Sacramento but im sure this is coming in the future.

The northbound route doesn't have a bus connection and just has you wait 3 hours in Martinez. Is this southbound transfer just because they assume they could have a delay so they don't want to hold up the only southbound train from Sac?