A key to the success of Ho-nolulu's multibillion-dollar mass- transit system will be ensuring it is well-integrated into growth areas on O'ahu, planners and other officials said yesterday.

The elevated, fixed-guideway route running from Kapolei to Manoa and possibly beyond was picked by the City Council in part to ensure maximum ridership in existing densely populated areas and to spur growth in places with still-untapped potential, the officials said.

Shopping malls, business complexes, educational institutions, military facilities, residential developers and the airport are among the people and places that can expect to benefit from a transit line as it comes into place in the next 15 to 20 years.

But making sure that development is done right — and in the right places — will take diligence and vigilance, they said.

"It's going to be the next big thing, the next big issue," said Councilman Gary Okino, a lifelong urban planner who has advocated rail development in Ho-nolulu for more than 40 years. "How will we regulate this? Can we come up with interim controls? How long will it take to get final rules ready? How do we do the zoning? Those are the things to watch for now."

Okino said the City Council is already considering a three-month moratorium on most developments around planned transit stations to guard against possible land grabs and quick low-rise developments built to capitalize on transit's potential. "We have to watch out for investors out there with not too much capital who want to turn a quick buck," he said.

The development opportunities vary along different parts of the route.

VISION FOR SECOND CITY

In the emerging second city of Kapolei and Kalaeloa, thousands of new homes, shopping centers and an entire University of Hawai'i campus will be built from scratch within walking distance of the new transit line. In particular, the UH-West campus, a $100 million Salvation Army community center, an Ala Moana-sized shopping mall and several subdivisions with thousands of homes are in the works; those projects likely will be accelerated now that developers know transit will serve them directly.

"The vision and potential in those areas are incredible. We can have a great new city for the people of O'ahu with affordable housing for senior citizens and thousands of other people," said state Sen. Will Espero, D-20th ('Ewa Beach, Waipahu).

A city analysis shows the Kalaeloa-Ko Olina-Kapolei area becoming the No. 2 destination for all transportation trips by the year 2030, second only by a whisker to downtown Honolulu. In all, the figures show more than 252,000 transportation trips ending daily in the area, up more than 400 percent from today.

Karl Kim, an urban planning professor at the University of Hawai'i, said it will be a long time before the changes brought by transit start showing up.

"It takes time for development patterns to adjust. It will be years, but the adjustment will occur. Every place that has put in a transit system has seen increased development around it," he said. "It brings a densification, and that's good thing in places with sensitive environments, like Hawai'i. It's the antidote to sprawl."

In the long stretch of transit line between Waipahu and Salt Lake, planners envision more moderate growth, with low-rise, mixed-use developments springing up within a quarter-mile of the transit stations planned along Farrington and Kamehameha Highways.

"In the urban corridor, transit allows you to have higher densities without increasing congestion," Okino said.

City officials have studied such developments in places like Portland and San Diego that have been built around transit lines with the help of public-private partnerships. Those projects can take many forms, sometimes with the government offering tax incentives for initial construction in return for increasing land values — and taxes — down the line.

"There's all kinds of potential," Okino said.

REIN ON URBAN SPRAWL

Jeff Mikulina, head of the Sierra Club's Hawai'i chapter, said that focusing development opportunities along the transit line will help prevent urban sprawl in other areas of O'ahu, such as Central O'ahu and the North Shore.

"The most important thing here are keeping controls on the lands that we most want to protect," Mikulina said. "With the investment money focused in the core area around rail, there won't be such a free-for-all rush to build elsewhere."

Mikulina and others envision a number of mixed-use developments springing up near rail stations that will let people live in affordable condos, walk downstairs to do their shopping and hop on a train that will deliver them quickly to their workplaces elsewhere in town.

"That's a very attractive idea for a lot of people like myself who don't necessarily want to live in a single-family home and drive a car to work every day," he said.

In the urban Honolulu section of the alignment, transit will be more likely to serve existing business and residential areas, rather than spurring new development. Even so, several proposed station stops, like the one at Halekauwila and South streets in Kaka'ako, have big tracts of vacant land nearby, making them ideal for new residential or commercial projects, planners said. City projects for Kaka'ako, for instance, call for daily transportation trips to rise from 60,000 today to about 166,000 by 2030.

Revenue generated by transit-oriented development could be pivotal in seeing that the full transit line is built, officials said. With funds from the federal government and a general excise tax surcharge expected to produce about $3.6 billion over the next 10 years, the city will have to rely on other sources to complete the full project, now estimated to cost more than $5 billion.

"Some of the big landowners are chomping at the bit to be part of this," Okino said. "They want to make sure they integrate their projects with ours because of the possible returns. Now's the time to do it."

Mayor Mufi Hannemann has also said that he'll seek support from the state for possible transit stops at the airport and Aloha Stadium and from the military, which would could see stations built at Pearl Harbor and Hickam Air Force Base.