Letter: Rail stations benefit property developers

We have all heard of the bridge to nowhere, but not to be outdone, Honolulu is now planning a rail line to everywhere.

I always had to wonder about the 21 stations planned along the route. Did we really need so many? It was certainly to the benefit of the real estate developers who received many incentives for building in clusters around each of the many stations.

Now there is talk of changing the route and shifting it northward to the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Apparently no one realized before how much of the work force is clustered there and not along the original route, where all the empty towers were built. Then there’s the flood plain, which no one thought of before.

But if the route is changed, real estate developers will receive even more incentives to build, and there will be more glass towers all the way to the Manoa Valley — all investor-owned and all empty. Maybe we should have thought of that before.

Edward D. Lasky

Hawaii Kai

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