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.

Construction and project tools update: Sound Transit downtown choices tighten while reviewers name top Microsoft Project alternatives for 2025

Key takeaway: Transit planners are narrowing station options for the Ballard Link Extension near the Chinatown‑International District while the Board moved the West Seattle Link Extension into design, and a separate review names Smartsheet the best overall alternative to Microsoft Project. Both topics have construction and schedule consequences that project teams should track closely.

Top-level transit developments

Sound Transit 3 (ST3) was approved by voters in 2016. Years after that approval, the agency continued detailed study of where to site a new station near the Chinatown‑International District for the Ballard Link Extension. Staff work in late 2023 and 2024 split environmental work and restarted BLE scoping for downtown station alternatives after community concern about impacts from a 5th Avenue option.

Staff now focus on three main CID station contenders: the Dearborn Street location (the program Preferred Alternative at the time of study), a 5th Avenue Shallow Diagonal option, and a 4th Avenue Shallow option. Modeling shows overall downtown boardings would be relatively similar across these alternatives, with only slight differences in weekday boardings and transfer patterns. The 5th Avenue Shallow Diagonal alternative has the shortest estimated construction timeline among the CID options described and would limit street‑level impacts compared with earlier versions of a 5th Avenue shallow design.

Sound Transit staff reviewed constructability, transit connections, modeled ridership, and station access for each option. Construction duration estimates in staff slides put Dearborn Street and the 5th Avenue Diagonal alternatives at about 6 to 7 years to build, while the 4th Avenue Shallow alternative would take about 10 to 12 years and cost over $600 million more than the proposed Dearborn alternative. An independent engineering assessment singled out railroad adjacency near King Street Station as a major constructability risk for the 4th Avenue options; that assessment described the railroad‑related risks as substantial, unpredictable, unquantifiable, and cannot be mitigated. Given the risks and limited extra benefit, staff concluded the 4th Avenue Shallow alternative appears impractical.

Board action on West Seattle Link Extension

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 board vote to move WSLE into the environmental review/30% design pipeline was 14–2, with two no votes from board members Bruce Dammeier and Jim Kastama. WSLE will add 4.1 miles of light rail from SODO to Alaska Junction and includes four new stations: SODO, Delridge, Avalon, and Alaska Junction. Staff expect construction would not start before 2027 and forecast daily ridership of 24,000 to 27,000 by 2042. The Board resolution included an amendment directing development of a workplan to improve the agency’s financial situation and to pursue cost savings while maintaining station access and stakeholder engagement.

Board members and staff stressed that advancing design does not mean an unconditional commitment to build at any cost. Staff noted construction accounts for about 86% of project funding needs, and that the workplan will include actions such as design‑services contracts, programmatic planning, and baselining decisions later in the process. Concern about affordability and cost escalation was a consistent theme; advocates have proposed radical savings such as using the existing downtown tunnel instead of building a second downtown tunnel if costs threaten the ST3 program.

Construction impacts and transfer quality

Sound Transit evaluated how alternatives affect transfers across the network. For Dearborn and 5th Avenue Diagonal alternatives, many Link‑to‑Link transfers would occur at Westlake Station. If the CID station is at 4th Avenue, transfers would shift toward the International District/Chinatown station. Staff emphasized that small changes in station access times and vertical circulation can materially affect modeled ridership in the dense downtown environment. The 4th Avenue option would require substantial downtown work, including reconstruction and demolition of nearby structures, and possible full closure of 4th Avenue South would shorten schedules but create severe traffic and freight impacts.

Project‑management tools for construction teams

The article is titled 8 Expert‑Approved Microsoft Project Alternatives (Updated for 2025). Authors evaluated eight project‑management tools as alternatives to Microsoft Project and concluded Smartsheet is the best overall alternative to Microsoft Project. The guide names TeamGantt, monday work management, ClickUp, Wrike, Teamwork, Jira, and Airtable among the eight alternatives and assigns a best use case to each.

Reviewers signed up for the tools and tested them with a test case when possible and consulted the tools’ official websites for more detail. The review compared functionality to support project management, user interface, ease of onboarding, pricing, and integration capability. The review included a detailed comparison table that highlights which project‑management tools provide a free trial, offer easy onboarding, and include advanced integration capabilities. The review encouraged readers to subscribe to Project Management Insider for best practices, reviews and resources; it said that newsletter is delivered Wednesdays. The review also notes you can import Microsoft Project files into the listed alternatives but not natively — .mpp or .xml files must first be converted to another format such as .xlsx, .csv, or .txt for import.

Key findings on individual platforms

• Smartsheet: overall rating 4.81 out of 5. Supports multiple work views — Gantt, table, board, timeline — includes dashboards, an intuitive spreadsheet‑like interface, onboarding resources, a sandbox for previewing apps, and integrates with Microsoft 365 plus over 100 other platforms. It supports lead/lag time, dependencies, and formulas and is noted as more accessible than Microsoft Project for users comfortable with spreadsheets.
• TeamGantt: rating 4.33 out of 5. Emphasizes visual timelines and Gantt charts, drag‑and‑drop interface, multiple views (kanban, calendar, list) and ensures a smooth transition by allowing import from MS Project.
• monday work management: rating 4.72 out of 5. Offers highly customizable reports and dashboards that pull real‑time data across boards, standard PM features including Gantt, baseline, critical path, and time tracking, visually driven board interface, five pricing tiers (Free, Basic, Standard, Pro, Enterprise), and many industry templates including construction and IT.
• ClickUp: rating 4.54 out of 5. Emphasizes collaboration with features like Chat, Whiteboards, Docs, spreadsheets, multiple views, templates, a Free Forever plan, and competitive pricing.
• Wrike: offers over 400 integrations (including Salesforce, Zoom, Box, Jira, Slack, Microsoft Teams), time‑tracking and timesheets, and is positioned for large teams and freelancers.
• Teamwork: includes project budget management, expense tracker, billable hours, invoicing, drag‑and‑drop and critical path viewing—useful for managing budgets and profitability.
• Jira: leading for software development projects with bug tracking, version release tools, Agile workflows, user stories and story‑point calculation, and a Free Forever plan for teams of 10 or fewer.
• Airtable: charges only users with editing access, offers Gantt with dependencies and grid/list views across all plans including the free tier, and is recommended when many stakeholders only need view or comment access.

Why this matters to builders and project leads: construction programs need both strong project controls and realistic station design choices. Tool selection affects schedule, cost tracking, and collaboration; downtown station choices affect construction duration, disruption to freight and transit, and system transfer quality. Teams should track the BLE further studies and WSLE design milestones and match tool choices to project complexity and team experience.

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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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