Posted on: Tuesday, July 6, 2004

EDITORIAL
Kapolei West needs roads, schools, jobs

We greet news of renewed plans to develop Kapolei West with a mixture of hope and anxiety — hope that the aspirations of large numbers of O'ahu families can be fulfilled there, and anxiety that city and state governments are unprepared properly to support these homes and their new populations.

As Advertiser business writer Andrew Gomes reports, this long-delayed residential golf course community would add more than 2,300 homes to the growing "second city" of Kapolei.

This is where the city's planning documents long have envisioned the bulk of O'ahu's growth, but the development of this former Campbell Estate sugar land has been uneven over the years.

Government has failed to keep pace with development in terms of infrastructure. Belatedly, roads are coming into being to move traffic in the convergence of Makakilo, Kapolei and 'Ewa, and schools and parks have tended to be at capacity from the moment they have opened.

But not a day goes by without letters to the editor complaining of the agonizing traffic jams there.

It's good news that Kapolei West is less dense than planned in the two previous attempts at developing this land. We hope to see a profusion of trees growing between the new homes to cool and beautify them. It's unfortunate that developments farther east, too dense for trees, now sit baking in the 'Ewa sun.

Most important, state and city government must accelerate their efforts to relocate jobs to the second city. That was the dream, and it should become the reality.

It's not acceptable that Kapolei West become just another bedroom community for Honolulu, adding hundreds of cars to the already-overcrowded H-1 commute.