Frustration in Chinatown as new subway is delayed
Merchants say business hurt by construction work in area
When it’s completed, the 1.7-mile Central Subway should make it easy to get to Chinatown. But for now, merchants say, its construction is driving away business, and a recently announced 10-month delay until completion could further the damage.
Slow going on construction of the Chinatown station at Stockton and Washington streets has pushed the projected start of subway service back from early 2019 to November of that year, an independent project monitor said.
A 10-month delay on a 10year project beneath a busy city may not seem like much, but it’s distressing for merchants like Andrew Yu of Mei’s Groceries, located less than a block from where the Chinatown station is being built.
Yu estimated that business for him has dropped about a third since construction began. The delay, he said, is “bad news for us. It’s no good.”
Work on the station has required a half block of Washington Street to be closed, tangling already sluggish traffic in the area. It has also eliminated scarce on-street parking and discouraged people from driving to Chinatown, said Dr. Dai Shi Zhang, proprietor of Hop Hing Herb Co., located a few doors from the station site.
“Some people don’t want to come to Chinatown because there is no parking and traffic is trouble,” he said. “That’s the problem.”
Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who represents Chinatown,
said that ultimately the subway will benefit the businesses, but that the protracted construction, which began in late 2013, is killing them.
“San Franciscans are generally good sports when it comes to waiting out the pain of a major public infrastructure project for the eventual public payoff,” he said. “There is a general expectation that there's a light at the end of the tunnel.”
But Chinatown merchants, including some longtime “legacy” businesses, are frustrated, Peskin said, and the city should consider offering some aid.
The $1.6 billion Central Subway was championed by Chinatown interests, who argued that it would help make up for the loss of the Embarcadero Freeway, which had provided easy access to the neighborhood before it was demolished after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The subway, they said, would bring rail service to the city’s densest and most transit-dependent neighborhood.
When it’s completed, the subway, an extension of the T-Third Street line, will run at street level from Fourth and King streets, near the Caltrain terminal at the south end, to an underground station at Stockton and Washington streets in Chinatown. Trains departing Fourth and King will stop at Fourth and Brannan before going underground near Bryant Street and on to subterranean stops at Yerba Buena/Moscone Center and Union Square before reaching the end of the line.
The 10-month delay stems mainly from slower-thananticipated work at the Chinatown station. Unlike the other two new subway stations, which are being built by closing the street, digging a big hole then covering it, the Chinatown station is essentially being mined, using the same technique used to carve out the fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel.
The technique allows Stockton Street to remain open while excavation goes on underneath, and permits construction of a grander station with curved archways as opposed to more typical rectangular box architecture, said John Funghi, Central Subway project manager.
But the technique is more difficult to pull off. Work on the station got off to a late start, fell behind schedule and continued to slip. Efforts to catch up have been unsuccessful, according to the independent monitor who reports to the Federal Transit Administration, which is providing most of the funding for the subway.
“It’s simply taking longer than expected,” Funghi said.
At the end of this month, in another effort to speed the opening, MTA officials, contractor Tutor Perini and Federal Transit Administration representatives will meet to explore ideas. Among the things they’ll discuss, Funghi said, is permitting testing and certification to start at the south end of the subway line, south of Market Street, while construction continues on the north end. Typically, testing is allowed only after all construction is complete.
While construction at Chinatown drags on, work on the rest of the line is progressing. At Union Square, workers have carved out a 100-foot-deep cavern for that station. After finishing the big hole recently — and planting an American flag at the bottom of the big hole to mark the occasion — crews started pouring concrete for the station floor this week.
South of Market, the shell of the Yerba Buena/Moscone station at Folsom and Fourth streets has been completed. Tracks have been installed and electrical and mechanical systems are in the works.
At the south end, near the Caltrain station at Fourth and King streets, workers have installed concrete slabs that will support rails leading into the subway beneath the densest parts of downtown San Francisco.
Funghi said the delay with the Chinatown station is the first since a schedule for the project’s construction was set in 2009. He pointed out that the project is still within its budget.
“While the focus is on us being late, and it is taking us longer than usual,” he said, “the important thing is that it is being done right. It is going to be a beautiful station when it’s done.”