October is a big month for Skyline — the city’s rail system opens its second leg from the Aloha Stadium to Middle Street. The 5.2-mile segment will include key employment centers, the airport and Pearl Harbor.
The extension will also mean reworking the bus schedules in the urban core to accommodate transfers. Honolulu Department of Transportation Services Deputy Director Jon Nouchi joined The Conversation on Wednesday to preview what riders can expect.
Interview highlights
On the new expansion reaching the Honolulu airport
JON NOUCHI: We're absolutely excited to add on another 5 miles and another four stations. And it seems a little short, but this is extremely significant in that it'll connect the other 11 miles and nine stations to major job centers in this 5-mile, four-station extension. … In this case, you'll go out to the Skyline station at the airport and find that Skyline goes west. It's for the benefit of our own people right now who live everywhere west of the airport. And I think that's just a great thing to introduce to people. And part of that effort is to just really show people that this is something new and give it a try.
On new routes and ridership at the Lagoon Drive Station
NOUCHI: We are currently open at Hālawa, Aloha Stadium Station. The route will go eastwards. Our next stop will be at the Makalapa Pearl Harbor-Hickam, for those very constituents, the people who work in the shipyard, the people who work on base, who work on Hickam. It'll continue into the Lelepaua, Daniel K. Inouye International Airport Station for anybody who's embarking upon a ride into the sky via airplane or the people who work there daily. … It'll continue east to the Āhua Lagoon Drive Station. And right there, we have all the ground transportation and the industrial areas. We have a lot of small businesses there, including Hawaii Candy. We have United Laundry. We have so many other things there. We actually have our larger partners too, for ground logistics, FedEx, UPS, and a lot of the, I like to think of them as the invisible industries that really fuel what we do, all the kitchens that do all the catering for all of our flights that come in and out of our airport. And so there's this huge ridership base at the Āhua Lagoon Drive Station, and where we can serve. And we continue eastward to the Kahauiki Kalihi Transit Center Station, which really is a gateway to Kalihi. At Kalihi Transit Center, you can get on a bus that will take you mauka, makai. It will take you everywhere between what I like to call West Kalihi or West Honolulu, and everything in between, till you get to Chinatown and downtown.
On getting familiar with the new stations
NOUCHI: On Thursday (Oct. 16), everything's going to change. So we're deploying a lot of manpower to just go out and make sure people know where they're going, know what stations to get on and off at, and how their ride is going to change. But we do immediately follow that with a free weekend on the 19th and 20th, the immediate next weekend, and that is with a HOLO card. Anybody can ride free on Skyline and TheBus, and that's important. I want people to get out there and go explore, go see how these stations can work for them, especially the airport station. It's good to be able to figure out how to get to the terminals, and we have land bridges and all these new connections at the airport. Our partners with HDOT (Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation) have been so good to work with in integrating the station right inside the airport. It's not like in other cities, where it's like a side afterthought, where we pushed it off to where they had space. It is smack dab in the middle of our airport. And that's a tremendous feat.
The public will get to ride the new leg on Oct. 16, starting at 4 a.m. For more information, click here.
This story aired on The Conversation on Oct. 8, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this interview for the web.
