The Chinatown Station is an underground light rail station of the San Francisco Municipal Railway's Muni Metro system, currently under construction as part of the Central Subway Project. It will serve as the future terminus of Phase 2 of the T Third Street line and will be located at the corner of Stockton and Washington streets in Chinatown, San Francisco.HistoryThe building at 933-949 Stockton, which housed 56 low-income residents, was acquired by eminent domain and demolished to make way for the new Chinatown Station. As required by law, the residents were relocated to a new building at Broadway and Sansome built with the help of city and state grants, including $8 million from the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA).The Board of Supervisors passed a resolution in October 2016 asking SFMTA to rename the station in honor of Rose Pak, but the SFMTA demurred, making an official policy to name stations after geographical destinations, not people in December 2016.In July 2017, it was reported that delays on the construction schedule of Chinatown station associated with excavation techniques intended to permit Stockton Street to remain open during construction had propagated through the entire Central Subway construction schedule and the anticipated opening date for the system would slip by ten months. Although Stockton remained open since construction began in 2013, a half-block stretch of Washington Street has been closed, exacerbating existing traffic and parking issues and depressing local business revenues. The ten-month delay meant the anticipated completion date slipped from December 26, 2018 to November 14, 2019. A follow-up report noted the schedule had continued to slip to an anticipated completion date of December 10, 2019 and warned the schedule may continue to slip by several more months. In June, Mayor Ed Lee directed $500,000 to the Office of Economic and Workforce Development to aid Chinatown merchants whose business traffic had slowed from Central Subway construction.
