Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state and the 47th-largest in the U.S. with a population of 390,724 according to the 2010 census. Incorporated in 1852, Oakland is the county seat of Alameda County and is a central hub city for a region of the San Francisco Bay Area known as the East Bay. The city lies directly across the bay from San Francisco.

The San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) is a government entity created by the California state legislature in 2007 by Senate Bill 976. The organization was formerly the San Francisco Bay Water Transit Authority (WTA), which the legislature established in 1999. The WTA declared its mission statement as creating, "A Strategy to Improve Public Transit with an Environmentally Friendly Ferry System", for the San Francisco Bay and this was codified by Senate Bill 915. WTA planned to create 8 new ferry routes with up to 31 new vessels that would exceed the EPA emission standards by 85%. Another goal for the new ferry network was to triple ridership to 12 million passenger trips annually from the current 4 million and to attract the bulk of these new transit passengers from cars. WETA is intended to continue and expand WTA's mission, the first step of which being to acquire all San Francisco Bay commuter ferry service except the Golden Gate Ferry.