EDITOR’S NOTE: The Honolulu Star-Advertiser is featuring each of the nine Skyline rail stations and surrounding communities stretching 11 miles from East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium. The series started Sunday and continues through Thursday. Passengers will begin riding Skyline on Friday.

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Around Hoomohala Avenue, a fair amount of the “where” has been established in what some people several years ago were calling the “train to nowhere.”

This street, completed in 2020, is the main entryway to the rising 11,750-home Ho‘opili community and will be a second future gateway to the University of Hawaii at West Oahu.

Between these two places, where Hoomohala intersects with Kualakai Parkway, is the city’s Keone‘ae rail station, awaiting its first public passengers Friday.

Wei Wu, a Ho‘opili homeowner living two blocks from the station, said proximity to what the city recently named Skyline was a big reason she bought her condominium, which includes ground-floor commercial space where she runs Paradise Massage & Spa.

“I said that’s a great location,” Wu related in 2020 as the Keone‘ae station was still under construction within a five-minute walk from her home and business.

Now about three years later, Wu is partly disappointed with service not starting a few years ago as city officials previously anticipated, and is still interested in whether her business might gain more customers.

“We have to see,” she said.

On the other side of Kualakai Parkway, David Mercil was a UH West Oahu business and accounting student in 2020 who was looking forward to being able to replace his slow and inconsistent commute to campus from town on TheBus with quicker and more reliable rail service.

“It would be really nice,” he said at the time about waiting for train cars running every 10 minutes or so during peak use periods. “Traffic really screws with the buses. I have to show up at the school an hour early because the bus is so off schedule.”

Now, rides on TheBus routes served by rail between East Kapolei and Aloha Stadium will be replaced by train cars, while the city also starts new bus service Friday to reach most stations and carry riders beyond Skyline’s two end points.

Even with that, and the expected expansion of the rail line to Middle Street in 2026 and Kakaako by 2031, use of the Keone‘ae station is forecast to be relatively low in part due to UH West Oahu and Ho‘opili being in relatively early stages of growth.

The most recent Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation passenger-use-by-station estimate was done in 2021 for an expected full-line opening in 2030. Use of the Keone‘ae station was estimated at 2,440 daily boardings, or second lowest among the first nine stations. The lowest was for the station next to Leeward Community College, with 1,450 daily boardings.

Beyond 2030, Keone‘ae use likely will be considerably higher if long-term development plans for UH West Oahu, Ho‘opili and 168 acres of nearby vacant state land are realized.

Initial pieces of the UH West Oahu campus were established before Ho‘opili in 2012 with five buildings; today seven buildings exist. Student enrollment began at about 2,000 and has leveled off at about 3,000 since 2016, though closer to 1,500 students are typically on campus on any given day because some classes are online.

Most students commute by car to UH West Oahu, which has 723 parking stalls.

Longer term, UH West Oahu expects to serve 20,000 students with a 380-acre campus footprint, up from the present 80 acres and comparable to UH’s flagship Manoa campus.

An adjacent community with homes, businesses, parks, schools and recreational facilities is envisioned on an additional 183 acres of UH land that includes a block between the existing campus and rail station.

This community, referred to as “university village,” is envisioned to turn the section of Hoomohala Avenue between the station and campus into a “vibrant college town mainstreet” lined with housing above shopping, dining and other service businesses, according to Bonnie Arakawa, director of planning and design at UH West Oahu.

“For our campus community and the future residents and employees of our University District Lands, rail transit will provide a convenient public transportation option for errands in Waipahu town, activities at Leeward CC, or for longer commutes in the future — making working and living near UH West Oahu more favorable and sustainable,” she said in an email.

UH selected developers Hunt Cos. and Stanford Carr in 2017 to carry out the project, though work is stalled over funding issues.

In the interim, a 304-stall park-and-ride lot and a bus hub have been built next to the station on part of the university village site.

Sometime in 2025 or later, this facility is slated to be replaced by a 1,000-stall lot and bus area on the opposite side of Kualakai Parkway at Ho‘opili fronting Hoomohala Avenue where a second entrance to the rail station would be added.

These additions won’t be needed until rider demand increases with the opening of a second segment of the rail line, according to HART.

From the existing station entryway next to UH, it’s a roughly six-minute walk down Hoomohala Avenue to an unmanicured edge of campus where the university put in a paved temporary walkway that one day will be replaced with a permanent pedestrian entry plaza.

Arakawa said the initial segment of rail will allow students and faculty to zip between UH West Oahu and LCC, an 11-minute ride, and later also connect with Honolulu Community College in the Kalihi area in 2031.

On the Ho‘opili side of Hoomohala Avenue, the pace of development has been stronger, with 2,500 homes built since the first one was delivered in 2017.

Existing homes near the station include a mainly market-priced, 318-unit rental apartment complex called The Element; a 120-unit, low-income rental housing complex called Kulia; and several phases of for-sale townhomes built with ground-floor commercial spaces topped by three residential levels.

Leo Konstantopoulos, a prospective buyer at Ho‘opili in 2020, said at the time that the homes were more affordable than what was available in town and that rail offered an alternative to a two-hour commute by car.

“The rail station was a huge factor for me,” he said.

Alana Volk, who moved into The Element in late 2022 and works at the Local Joe Coffee Roasters cafe a block from the Keone‘ae station, said recently that she doesn’t anticipate riding rail unless the city fulfills its original plan to stop at Ala Moana Center, which could be part of a future phase after 2031.

Ho‘opili developer D.R. Horton has been building about 400 homes per year on average, and many future homes will be closer to a second rail station, named Honouliuli, within the community closer to Farrington Highway.

In addition to future development around UH and at Ho‘opili, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources has a plan to produce 1,000 homes, a hotel, retail and office space, and warehouses on 168 acres of vacant land it owns close to the Keone‘ae station.

An initial phase with 720 homes, a 180-room hotel, 50,000 to 64,000 square feet of retail space and 20,000 square feet of office space on 51 acres next to the station is projected for development through 2029.

Completing the entire DLNR plan, which is projected to create 2,390 long-term jobs and also include 1 million square feet of industrial buildings on 60 acres just mauka of UH, is expected to run beyond 2040.

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• Click here to view previous rail coverage.

Keone‘ae (fine, soft, powdery sand). Keone‘ae is a historic farming village that once existed in the area known today as the intersection of Farrington Highway and Kalo‘i Gulch.