This is the year that Oahu’s future could literally be set in concrete.
Panicked by former Gov. Ben Cayetano’s emergence as a credible anti-rail candidate for mayor, the city has crews pouring cement as fast as they can mix it for West Oahu rail columns, pressing to get the $5.27 billion project past the point of no return if Cayetano wins.
And the state Land Use Commission last week sped plans to pave some 2,300 acres of Oahu’s prime agricultural lands for housing developments that will put 11,759 new homes at Ho‘opili in Ewa and 5,000 homes at Koa Ridge near Mililani.
As with rail, Cayetano is against developing the farmlands, while his opponents, Mayor Peter Carlisle and former acting mayor Kirk Caldwell, both support the developments.
To the business and labor interests pushing these projects and their political allies, rail and the big housing developments are inextricably linked.
The current rail plan makes no sense without new housing to provide enough ridership to justify the sky-high cost.
The housing developments make no sense without rail to partially mitigate the additional traffic created by tens of thousands of new commuters.
As rail columns rise on vacant land, it grates many on the Leeward side that rail seems more intended to serve the new developments than the long-suffering residents of existing communities.
The current plan has no train stations in the heart of heavily populated Kapolei and Ewa Beach, while two stations are going up on the empty farmlands that would become Ho‘opili.
The overriding question voters must decide this year is whether any of it makes sense.
The promise of the second city in West Oahu — relieving traffic congestion by moving jobs to where people live — is unfulfilled. The region has become mostly bedroom communities whose residents commute to Honolulu.
To build more housing for more commuters appears to double down on a failed strategy. Even with rail, these developments would add more cars and congestion than we have today.
It deals a blow to the state’s priority goal of agricultural self-sufficiency and puts off reckoning with the fact that our island has a finite amount of land to build on, and an economy tied to endless cycles of new development simply isn’t sustainable.
Cayetano’s candidacy makes the 2012 election a clear referendum on rail and the future of Oahu development.
If he wins, it’ll be an undeniable mandate to stop rail and slow development of farmlands. Current frenzied efforts to tie his hands in advance will likely fail.
If Cayetano loses, opponents of rail and the new developments will have to get used to the idea that a majority of Oahuans are either OK with the current direction or just don’t care.
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Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.
