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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When city Skyline trains start carrying public passengers Friday, the last station at the town-bound end of the initial service line will lack what was supposed to be a gleaming new ridership magnet.

A replacement of Hawaii’s largest outdoor sports and entertainment venue, Aloha Stadium, was previously expected to open this year. Yet construction remains a ways off, and the current facility long nicknamed “Rust Palace” is condemned for spectator events.

Such events, including high school and University of Hawaii football games, music concerts and monster-truck rallies, were a considerable factor in the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation projecting that the Halawa rail station would be the sixth-busiest among 19 stations from East Kapolei to Kakaako operating by 2030.

Now, it’s still questionable whether a new stadium, to be developed under a private partnership with the state, and the city’s 19th rail station in Kakaako, will be done by their latest estimated completion dates in 2028 and 2031, respectively.

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The Halawa station built on part of a former stadium overflow parking lot also is expected to be integrated with new housing, retail businesses, restaurants, a hotel and other uses in an envisioned mixed-use community anchored by a replacement stadium under the state’s delayed redevelopment project called the New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District.

Lori Kahikina, HART executive director and CEO, would not say whether the stadium redevelopment plan delays are a disappointment.

“HART cannot take a position on the plans for the stadium,” she said in a statement. “However, HART does look forward to all of the rail stations being further integrated into their communities.”

In the interim, the Halawa rail station with a 590-stall automobile park-and-ride lot has been positioned as more of a transportation node for catching TheBus into town or riding rail into westward communities including Pearl City, Waipahu and East Kapolei.

City officials are expanding bus service to and from the station to serve rail riders until a second batch of four stations between Pearl Harbor and Middle Street open in 2025, followed by six stations from Kalihi to Kakaako in 2031.

Some riders also are expected to come from a few existing neighborhoods in the vicinity of the Halawa station, while swap meets and other events in the stadium parking lot are continuing and should draw some rail passenger traffic.

Still, the absence of an operating stadium for the next five years, or possibly longer, is a lost opportunity to help make better early use of rail.

Up to 300 events annually were held at the 50,000-seat stadium, with the biggest ones in recent years before the facility’s 2020 closure drawing tens of thousands of fans.

Hawaii native Bruno Mars set an Aloha Stadium record in November 2018 with three consecutive sellouts, surpassing U2 and Michael Jackson’s previous two-night sellouts. A concert by rapper Eminem in February 2019 drew 28,216 fans, and a pair of monster truck rallies and a motorcycle dirt track race drew 77,871 fans over three days in May 2019.

Attendance at UH football games was often around 20,000.

The stadium also hosted dozens of smaller events, including high school football, flag football, other youth and professional sports, high school graduation ceremonies, marching band festivals and more.

Rail officials even created a storage track at Halawa station to deploy extra trains for handling large events.

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More frequent or regular rail riders using the station are expected to come from neighborhoods within a half-mile radius, which is considered a convenient walking distance, as well as some residents living a little farther in Aiea, Halawa Heights, Aliamanu, Foster Village, Salt Lake and other places where it may be convenient to use the station’s park-and-ride lot.

A bus transit center adjacent to Halawa station also has been built and will be used in part for a new express route with buses every 10 minutes at peak and midday service periods running to and from downtown Honolulu, Waikiki and UH Manoa.

The city also plans a peak-­period bus service into and out of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-­Hickam, where a rail station is expected to open with three other stations in 2026 as part of the second of three segments.

HART has not estimated station use for the initial nine-­station segment. The agency’s most recent estimate was for all 19 stations operating in 2030, and the Halawa station was expected to have 4,500 daily boardings on average, or sixth-most among 19 stations, trailing only downtown Honolulu, Waiawa near Pearl Highlands, Kalauao near Pearlridge Center, Ho‘ae‘ae at West Loch, and a station in Iwilei.

If the state’s plan for redeveloping the 98-acre Aloha Stadium site with a private partner is realized, the Halawa rail station stands to be more heavily used over the next couple of decades.

The stadium redevelopment plan envisions 1,810 homes, 620 hotel rooms, 641,000 square feet of retail and 192,000 square feet of office space developed over 20 years.

More development could occur on nearby sites that include Aiea Elementary School, Stadium Mall, Stadium Marketplace and the Puuwai Momi public housing complex, according to a city transit-­oriented development plan adopted in 2020 that envisions higher-density redevelopment near the rail station.

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• Click here to view previous rail coverage.

Halawa (Curve). Halawa is the last ahupua‘a of the ‘Ewa district before traversing into Moanalua, the first ahupua‘a of the Kona district. Here you will find the wahi pana, Kapu‘ukapu (the forbidden hill) which by name implies the area once held religious and ceremonial significance.