How do you mine the deepest building excavation ever in San Francisco while working in a highly congested area?
How do you mine the deepest building excavation ever in San Francisco while working in a highly congested area?

SFMTA Central Subway Chinatown Station

Construction for this new station will require the deepest building excavation ever in the City of San Francisco in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown neighborhood.
 
Customized Solution
  • The new, 100,000 s.f. Chinatown Subway Station will extend Muni-light rail service from South of Market to Chinatown. The station includes a mined cavern with a platform for trains, as well as the concrete station structure that extends 100 feet below ground. The project includes retail at the street level and is being designed for future rooftop vertical development opportunities.
  • Perhaps the greatest challenge was minimizing obstruction to traffic above during all phases of construction. The fast construction schedule also required a complicated design solution with a bottom-up construction approach.
  • Underground construction required minimizing ground settlement in order to maintain the foundations of numerous existing historic structures above despite the massive volume of the excavation.
  • For current construction updates, please visit the Central Subway Chinatown Blog.
CATEGORIES

Justice/Civic/Governmental, Transportation


HIGHLIGHTS
  • Architect: Kwan Henmi
  • Owner: San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
  • Concrete shear walls, concrete moment frames, horizontal steel trusses and center-coring of the existing brick masonry walls.