Sound Transit narrows downtown station choices while teams weigh Smartsheet as MS Project alternative

Seattle, Washington, September 30, 2025

News Summary

Sound Transit staff have narrowed Chinatown‑International District station options for the Ballard Link Extension, focusing on Dearborn, 5th Avenue Shallow Diagonal, and 4th Avenue Shallow alternatives while deeming the 4th Avenue option impractical due to rail adjacency risks and higher cost and schedule. Separately, a review of project‑management tools ranked Smartsheet as the best overall alternative to Microsoft Project, with TeamGantt, monday, ClickUp and others noted for specific use cases. Builders and project leads should track BLE studies and WSLE design milestones and match tool selection to project complexity to manage schedule, cost and collaboration risks.

Top lines:

Smartsheet is the best overall alternative to Microsoft Project after an eight‑tool evaluation. At the same time, work on the Ballard Link Extension (BLE) Chinatown‑International District (CID) station and the West Seattle Link Extension (WSLE) advanced with new studies, cost and schedule estimates, and a board decision that moves WSLE into further design.

Project‑management review summary

The article is titled 8 Expert‑Approved Microsoft Project Alternatives (Updated for 2025). The authors evaluated eight project‑management tools as alternatives to Microsoft Project. After evaluating the eight tools, the author(s) concluded Smartsheet is the best overall alternative to Microsoft Project.

The article names TeamGantt, monday work management, ClickUp, Wrike, Teamwork, Jira, and Airtable among the eight alternatives. The review considered parameters including functionality to support project‑management usage, user interface, ease of onboarding, pricing, and integration with other applications. The reviewers signed up for the tools and tested them one by one whenever possible, using a test case and observing platform performance. The reviewers also consulted the tools’ official websites for additional information.

The guide compiled a list of 8 alternatives to Microsoft Project and indicated a best use case for each. The article included a detailed comparison table highlighting which project‑management tools provide a free trial, offer easy onboarding, and include advanced integration capabilities.

Key findings on tools and features

Smartsheet’s overall rating as 4.81 out of 5 (as presented in the text). Smartsheet supports multiple work views: Gantt, table, board, timeline. Smartsheet includes a dashboard feature for viewing project status. Smartsheet’s user interface is described as intuitive. Smartsheet provides onboarding resources for first‑time users. Smartsheet includes a sandbox feature that allows previewing apps before deployment. Smartsheet integrates with Microsoft 365 and integrates with over 100 other platforms. Smartsheet uses a spreadsheet‑like interface and supports lead/lag time, dependencies, and formulas. The article says users comfortable with spreadsheets will find Smartsheet more accessible than Microsoft Project.

TeamGantt emphasizes visual timelines and Gantt charts for scheduling, organizing, and tracking tasks. TeamGantt has a drag‑and‑drop interface that allows building Gantt charts quickly. TeamGantt allows switching between multiple views including kanban board, calendar, and list with a single click. TeamGantt allows importing files from MS Project (the article states it ensures a smooth and quick transition). The article shows TeamGantt’s rating as 4.33 out of 5 (as presented in the text).

monday work management offers highly customizable reports and dashboards that can pull real‑time data across multiple boards and present them in an integrated dashboard. The tool provides standard project‑management functionality including Gantt charts, project baseline, critical path, and time tracking. monday’s interface is visually driven and board‑based with extensive customization options. monday offers 5 pricing options: Free, Basic, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise. monday provides many templates for various industries (the article cites construction and IT as examples). The article shows monday’s rating as 4.72 out of 5 (as presented in the text).

ClickUp places value on collaboration and brings tasks, tools, and teams together in one platform. ClickUp provides features like whiteboards and spreadsheets for team collaboration. ClickUp has a Free Forever plan with basic project‑management features. ClickUp is presented as competitively priced compared with other alternatives to Microsoft Project. ClickUp includes collaboration features such as Chat, task comments, Whiteboards, and Docs. ClickUp offers multiple views and a collection of templates for various tasks and industries. The article shows ClickUp’s rating as 4.54 out of 5 (as presented in the text).

Wrike offers a large number of native and third‑party integrations accessible via its app directory and Wrike Integrate (the article states over 400 integrations). The article explicitly lists integrations Wrike offers, including Salesforce, Zoom, Box, Jira, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Sheets, Drive, and Outlook. Wrike includes time‑tracking features and timesheets for reviewing logged hours. Wrike is positioned as a tool for managing workload of large teams including freelancers. Wrike’s rating is shown in the article (appears in text as a 4.x figure; the exact number is shown in the source material).

Teamwork provides project‑budget management features, including a project expense tracker in the form of timesheets, project revenue monitoring, and invoicing. Teamwork includes a billable hours tracker. Teamwork supports drag‑and‑drop capability and critical path viewing. The article highlights Teamwork as suited to closely manage project budgets and profitability. Teamwork’s rating is shown in the article (a 4.x figure as presented in the source material).

Jira is positioned as a leading platform for software development projects. Jira includes features specifically designed for software development: bug tracking and managing software version launches. Jira supports Agile workflows, including user stories and story‑point calculation for Scrum. Jira offers a Free Forever plan for small teams (teams of 10 people or fewer). The article shows Jira’s rating as a 4.x figure (as presented in the source material).

Airtable charges only users who have editing access; read‑only users and commenters can use the tool for free. Airtable includes standard project‑management functionality (Gantt with dependencies, grid, and list view) across all plans, including the free tier. The article recommends Airtable if there are many stakeholders who will only view or comment on projects, because commenters and read‑only users can be free. Airtable’s rating is shown in the article (as presented in the source material).

The article states Microsoft Project (and Microsoft Planner) offer robust project‑management functionality, including Gantt charts and task dependencies. The article states Microsoft Project is intended for more experienced users and requires a steep learning curve for beginners. The article states Microsoft Project is designed to integrate with the Microsoft ecosystem rather than with other platforms, making it harder to incorporate into workflows for teams that do not already own other Microsoft products. The article states there is no direct native MPP (.mpp) import support in the alternatives — conversion is required before importing. The article states you can import Microsoft Project files into the listed alternatives but not natively — you must first convert .mpp or .xml files to another format (for example .xlsx, .csv, or .txt) for import.

The review encourages readers to subscribe to Project Management Insider for best practices, reviews and resources; it says that newsletter is delivered Wednesdays. The site encouraged subscribing to Project Management Insider and to add [email protected] to contacts to ensure newsletters hit the inbox.

Sound Transit CID station study and BLE status

Sound Transit 3 (ST3) was approved by voters in 2016. Years after ST3 approval, Sound Transit was still studying where to put a new station near the Chinatown‑International District (CID) for the Ballard Link Extension (BLE). Sound Transit published the Draft West Seattle and Ballard Link Extensions Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) in 2022.

Community uproar over potential impacts of an expanded International District‑Chinatown station under 5th Avenue South led Sound Transit to consider multiple alternative station locations. In late 2023, Sound Transit determined that the amount of additional study required splitting two projects apart and restarted the environmental impact assessment process for BLE (starting with a request for comments on scoping).

At a Sound Transit System Expansion Committee meeting, staff presented Further Studies on BLE focused on three CID alternatives being considered seriously: the Preferred Alternative of a Dearborn Street location (formerly CID South Station), a shallow diagonal station under 5th Avenue South (5th Avenue Shallow Diagonal), and a transit hub under 4th Avenue South (4th Avenue Shallow). There were other alternatives under consideration for the CID station (including the original 5th Avenue location), but those three were the main contenders in the presentation.

Constructability, schedule and cost comparisons

Sound Transit staff reviewed constructability of each alternative, including estimated construction duration and methods. Sound Transit staff reviewed how each alternative impacts local and regional transit connections, including modeled ridership, station access, and transfers. Sound Transit’s estimates (as presented in the staff slides) indicated construction durations: Dearborn Street and 5th Avenue Diagonal alternatives: estimated 6 to 7 years to build. 4th Avenue Shallow alternative: estimated 10 to 12 years to build.

In 2023, the 4th Avenue Shallow alternative was estimated to cost over $600 million more than the proposed Dearborn alternative. The 4th Avenue Shallower alternative would build a station practically at‑grade with King Street Station, as opposed to the Shallow option which would be deeper below the street. Staff noted that building the 4th Avenue option would require reconstruction of the Yesler Way Bridge and demolition of the King County Administrative Building in order to build the tunnel to Westlake Station and on to South Lake Union.

Staff considered complete closure of 4th Avenue South during construction as a way to shorten schedule, and concluded that full closure would shave about 3.5 years off construction but cause especially severe traffic impacts in the CID because 4th Avenue is a major transit and freight thoroughfare. Sound Transit staff modeled ridership and travel times for each CID alternative and acknowledged that the high volume of transit choices in the Seattle core makes modeling results highly sensitive to small changes such as station access times.

The ridership modeling resulted in nearly indistinguishable differences in travel patterns between the three CID alternatives, with slight (~1%) differences in predicted weekday boardings between alternatives. For the Dearborn and 5th Avenue Diagonal alternatives, Link‑to‑Link transfers would mostly happen at Westlake Station; for the 4th Avenue Shallow alternative, those transfers would mostly happen at the ID/C Station. Sound Transit determined that total boardings near new downtown stations would be relatively similar regardless of which CID alternative is chosen, with the Dearborn alternative producing slightly fewer boardings.

Risk, engineering review, and community response

Sound Transit commissioned an independent report from professional engineer David A. Peters to assess construction risks for the 4th Avenue alternatives. David A. Peters identified multiple construction risks for the 4th Avenue options, with the most significant being adjacency to the BNSF railway that passes King Street Station into the Great Northern Railway Tunnel; he described the railroad‑related risks as substantial, unpredictable, unquantifiable, and cannot be mitigated. Staff concluded that, given the risks and limited additional benefit, the 4th Avenue Shallow alternative appears impractical.

With the 4th Avenue alternative unlikely, attention turned to the 5th Avenue Shallow Diagonal alternative, which is a refinement of the former 5th Avenue Shallow alternative that previously would have shut down 5th Avenue for several years during construction. The 5th Avenue Shallow Diagonal alternative is described as having fewer construction impacts to traffic and fewer business displacements than the earlier 5th Ave Shallow alternative. The 5th Avenue Diagonal station would be closely tied to the existing ID/C Station but at a depth requiring four flights of escalators to transfer between the platforms. The 5th Avenue Diagonal alternative has the shortest estimated construction timeline among the CID options described. The 5th Avenue Diagonal alternative assumes construction of a proper Midtown station near Madison (as part of the conceptual plan).

Sound Transit staff and the article observed that BLE construction affordability is a concern and that cost escalations may threaten the ST3 program; radical cost‑saving measures (including scrapping the second downtown tunnel) have been proposed by some advocates. Use of the existing downtown tunnel instead of building a second downtown tunnel has been proposed by some advocates as a cost‑savings measure.

West Seattle Link Extension (WSLE) board action and next steps

On Oct. 24, 2024, the Sound Transit Board selected the current preferred alternative as the project to be built for the West Seattle Link Extension (WSLE), advancing it in environmental review and into design (the article cites this board action). The WSLE decision had two no votes on the Board (the final vote was 14–2). The two no votes were from board members Bruce Dammeier (Pierce County Executive) and Jim Kastama (Puyallup Mayor).

WSLE would add 4.1 miles of light rail service from SODO to West Seattle’s Alaska Junction neighborhood. The WSLE project includes four new stations: SODO, Delridge, Avalon, and Alaska Junction. WSLE is part of the Sound Transit 3 (ST3) plan, approved by voters in 2016. WSLE would reduce travel time from Alaska Junction to Westlake station by 50% at peak hours once BLE is complete, making the trip 16 minutes. WSLE is forecast to carry an estimated 24,000 to 27,000 riders daily by 2042.

Construction of WSLE was reported as expected to start in 2027. The Board’s approved resolution included an amendment to develop and implement a workplan to improve the agency’s financial situation and move WSLE through design; the amendment also directed continuing to reduce project impacts during design and pursue cost savings while maintaining station access and stakeholder engagement. The WSLE decision advanced the project into the environmental review/30% design pipeline, and the preferred alternative would get preliminary engineering and advance to 30% design as part of the Final EIS process.

What this means for riders and stakeholders

Transfer patterns, vertical circulation and number of escalator flights matter for rider experience. Commenters and staff highlighted that transfers requiring multiple long escalator/elevator movements reduce perceived quality of the network and can deter riders, especially those with luggage, strollers, bicycles, or mobility limitations. The presentation and commenters discussed SODO as a potential transfer point that could be designed to provide fast cross‑platform transfers for many riders, with some commenters arguing this would be cheaper than complex downtown transfers.

Staff emphasized that differences in station access times can materially affect modeled outcomes in a dense transit environment. If BLE costs explode, the Board may have to consider difficult choices; the article noted prior examples of cost increases. Sound Transit staff presentations, independent engineering reviews, public comment and board votes will continue to shape the path forward.

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Key features table

Deeper Dive: News & Info About This Topic

Additional Resources

• WestSideSeattle: West Seattle Link Extension gets go-ahead (Federal Transit Administration)
• Wikipedia: West Seattle Link Extension
• FOX 13 Seattle: I‑5 North shutdown alternatives & routes
• Google Search: I-5 North shutdown alternatives routes
• Seattle Transit Blog: Ballard Link Extension — 4th Ave shallow is dead, long live 5th Ave diagonal
• Google Scholar: Ballard Link Extension Chinatown‑International District 4th Ave 5th Ave diagonal
• West Seattle Blog: West Seattle light rail — Sound Transit Board finalizes preferred alternative routing
• Encyclopedia Britannica: West Seattle Light Rail preferred alternative routing
• Tunneling Online: Alignment selected for West Seattle Link Extension
• Google News: West Seattle Link Extension alignment tunneling

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