Editor’s Note: Quotes from the CID Coalition which were accidentally omitted during original publication of this article have been added into the online edition.
In Fall 2025, Sound Transit is slated to release an updated Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on their proposed station options in Chinatown-International District (CID).
The station is part of the proposed Ballard Link Extension (BLE), itself part of the larger Sound Transit 3 (ST3) system expansion. According to Sound Transit, the BLE adds almost 8 miles of light rail and nine new stations in dense residential and job centers in the CID, Downtown, Interbay, and Ballard neighborhoods. The project is currently in its planning phase, which includes determining the station’s final location, based on three active proposed sites.
Disruption, noise pollution, and other adverse conditions are almost guaranteed, regardless of the chosen option. For many CID community advocates, each proposal’s positive and negative impacts to their beloved neighborhood require careful assessment.
Sound Transit continues to receive public comments during their board meetings held on the fourth Thursday of each month. The last one was on August 28, 2025.
What the proposals promise
When reached out for comment, Sound Transit offered information related to upcoming planning phases. Sound Transit published Additional Study Results in November 2024. In contrast to the first Draft EIS that proposed four options for the CID station (4th Ave. Shallow, 4th Ave. Deep, 5th Ave. Shallow and Diagonal, and 5th Ave. Deep), the study narrowed down the options to three. On the table now are: 4th Avenue Shallow, 5th Avenue Shallow Diagonal, and Sound Transit’s current preferred alternative: CID North-South stations with the South station on Dearborn Street.
Sound Transit documents detail the three options currently being considered. It is expected that there will be more in-depth analyses with the release of the new Draft EIS in Fall 2025.
The CID community continues to weigh in on the options
The CID community is almost unanimously opposed to the 5th Ave Diagonal proposal. At the same time, they continue to be divided over whether the 4th Ave. Shallow option or the North-South option is the better one.
In a written public comment by Brien Chow, co-founder of Transit Equity for All (TEA), at a Sound Transit System Expansion Committee Meeting on August 14, 2025, he stated that: “The current preferred alternative will break this hub apart, create long, unsafe transfers, force out-of-direction travel, create a station that connects to nothing, hurt small businesses, go against Sound Transit’s equity promises, destroy the National Register Seattle Chinatown Historic District with years of street closures, resident and business displacement, and erase CID as the cultural center of Washington state’s Asian American communities.”
Another co-founder of TEA, Betty Lau, said in her written public comment on August 28, 2025, that the current preferred alternative “breaks the Sound Transit promise of economic benefits to the CID as well as denying accessibility and connectivity to Seattle’s last remaining community of color, one that is the heart of the state’s Asian American communities… Keep the Sound Transit promise to the Region and the CID communities of color to build the 4th Avenue Super Transit Hub at Union Station!”
TEA is a campaign that aims to protect the historic Chinatown International District neighborhood while improving access and quality of public transit for all. According to a September 6, 2024 Northwest Asian Weekly article, the campaign boasts almost 11,000 supporters and 68 businesses and organizations.
Diane Rodill and Paul Lewis are retired East Coast transplants who settled in the Pioneer Square neighborhood 13 years ago. They regularly walk and shop at CID, as well as use public transit around four or five times a week, a convenience that they do not take for granted.
“Given our location, as a convenience for seniors like us, the 4th Ave. Shallow option seems the best,” said Lewis. “But, looking at the construction impact, I can see where it has potential for really screwing us up whenever we want to go over to Chinatown, because the pedestrian bridge that we use is right in the middle of that.”
When talking about the North-South option and Dearborn St. Station, Lewis said: “It is not all that far out of the way. It’s a place that is more amenable to development with less disruption to the existing neighborhood, and it could lead to some improvement in the area, [like] additional housing.”
“Chinatown doesn’t need any more disruption,” he added. “What they need is support.”
While the community is still divided by this issue, Rachtha Danh, CID community organizer for Puget Sound Sage, is hopeful that eventually, CID will unite for a shared vision of transit and development in the neighborhood: “As the information [from Sound Transit] has come out it has slowly changing people’s mind and us being public about the damages that fourth will do to the neighborhood. But also we have to realize that 5th Ave. Diagonal is also still on the board, it is a cheaper and quickest option, and it also fulfills the urbanist dream.”
Puget Sound Sage is a non-profit organization that, since 2007, aims to chart a path to a living local economy by developing community power to influence, lead and govern. Danh argues that equitable, community-oriented development should not be deprioritized just for transit rider convenience: “It’s five minutes max transfer time saved [compared to the North-South option]. What is five minutes of convenience over rolling back decades of inequitable development for CID?”
Danh is also concerned about benefits for the CID community, especially in terms of affordable housing and equitable transit-oriented development. He believes that Dearborn St. Station has a footprint which offers more options for affordable housing and public space.
He also worries about what is at stake for the culture and history of the CID: “I not only love the history of this neighborhood, but I love the people of the neighborhood: five minority ethnicities overlapping each other in time and space in order to create a shared culture, and one that is built of resistance. This fight is as big as the Kingdome. This is as big as I-5.”
The CID Coalition also agrees with Danh. The CID Coalition is a grassroots group of community organizers dedicated to fighting displacement in the CID, centering the needs of the community in development decisions, and standing in solidarity with other groups who are fighting displacement.
Meilani Mandery of CID Coalition argued that North-South option is “the only option that accounts for the needs of the CID, making sure residents and businesses are able to stay during and after construction, but also the future of the neighborhood.”
This is because as part of the city’s approach on Equitable Transit-Oriented Development, the land used for staging construction can be for community use after the station is built. Thus, CID Coalition thinks that “this is the first time in our neighborhood’s history that we have the opportunity to expand. We’ve dealt with generations of public projects wiping out swaths of our neighborhood (I-5) and negatively impacting residents for the benefit of others (sports stadiums). This is an opportunity for us to actually get something back: affordable housing, a senior center, a larger library. North and South stations are an investment into our neighborhood’s future.”
Possible federal budget cuts weigh heavily on public transportation projects
On April 24, 2025, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent a letter to recipients of federal funding for transportation projects, reminding them to “comply fully with all applicable Federal laws and regulations.” Among possible applicable laws and regulations may be those from President Trump’s executive orders, which have called for an abolishment of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies throughout federal grantmaking and entreated transportation agencies to comply with immigration enforcement.
In response, on May 2, 2025, King County filed a lawsuit in federal court, now known as King County v. Turner. Sound Transit later joined the lawsuit, alongside dozens of other cities, counties, and agencies across the country. The lawsuit’s defendants are the U.S Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Federal Transportation Administration. The plaintiffs allege that the new grant conditions were not authorized by Congress and violate the First (Freedom of Association), Fifth (Due Process), and Tenth (Powers Reserved to the States) Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
On June 3rd, 2025, U.S. District Court Judge Barbara J. Rothstein granted a preliminary injunction preventing the enforcement of the federal grant conditions. The case is ongoing as of time of publication. While the preliminary injunction remains in place, there is uncertainty on whether and how the new grant conditions and funding concerns can affect the BLE and the choice of location for the CID station.
Elections may affect local government preference and support of proposals
A decision for the station location will likely not be made until after the November 2025 local elections.
Current City of Seattle incumbent mayor Bruce Harrell previously proposed and promoted the current preferred alternative of CID North-South stations. Callie Craighead, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office, reaffirmed Mayor Harrell’s continued support for the North-South option: “Mayor Harrell continues to believe that the North and South of CID stations are the best options to meet local and regional mobility needs and create new opportunities in the CID neighborhood.”
At the same time, Craighead explained why the 5th Ave. Diagonal option continued to be on the table, despite lack of support: “Since [the 5th Ave Diagonal option] was part of the draft Environmental Impact Statement, it will continue to appear in documents in the years ahead just like all other station locations along the Ballard alignment that have multiple options… studying all the options on the table is part of the due diligence that a project of this magnitude deserves to make an informed decision.”
“When the Environmental Impact Statement becomes available, the City will support Sound Transit to facilitate accessible, in-language outreach and engagement in the CID community…” Craighead continued, in her statement on behalf of Mayor Harrell’s office. “We remain committed to listening to the community and supporting good transit access in the CID both to serve residents who live there and bring visitors to the neighborhood as well.”
But while Harrell is running for a second mayoral term, he is also being challenged by progressive Katie Wilson, co-founder of the Transit Riders Union (TRU), who beat Harrell in the August 2025 primary elections by a margin of almost 10%.
In an interview, Wilson talked about her and TRU initially supporting the 4th Ave. Shallow option. At the same time, she acknowledged that sentiments have shifted now, with the feasibility of 4th Ave. Shallow being called into question, and the unpopularity of 5th Ave. Diagonal. While Wilson stated that she still believes that an iteration of the 4th Ave. option might still be the strongest way forward long-term.
“There’s the risk that the construction leads to further displacement of low-income folks, but there’s also the opportunity to use this as a time to really build permanently affordable housing,” said Wilson.
Wilson also stated the value of having the CID community be part of the process. She said: “I would just want to work really closely with CID communities and partner with CID organizations to make sure that we’re building this in a way that is confident with their vision for the future of the neighborhood and where they really have not just input, but power.”
Adrian Alarilla, PhD, is a program evaluator, writer, researcher, and filmmaker. Born and raised in the Philippines, he is currently based south of in Seattle, and has a PhD in History from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Besides contributing to the International Examiner, he is an associate with Alaska-based consulting firm Stellar Group, and has worked with Tribal, governmental, and nongovernmental agencies in Alaska, Hawaiʻi, and the Pacific Islands.
