Restoring Abundance Along our Skyline

December 1, 2025

By Dr. Kealoha Fox, Deputy Director of the City and County of Honolulu’s Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency / Ka Wai Ola News

The city’s new vision to bring food, culture, and connection through food access hubs

When Kānehoalani passes over Oʻahu, sunlight glimmers on Skyline tracks and new garden beds at Hōʻaeʻae Station. Between the steel and the soil at Honouliuli Station, 25 varieties of kalo lift their leaves to the dawn while 15 ʻulu trees spread their shade – living symbols of a quiet transformation taking root.

This fall, Skyline stations in Waipahu and Hoʻopili came alive – boosted by the October opening of segment two, which now connects Kapolei to Kalihi. Kūpuna arrived with carts, keiki darted between food tents, and local farmers sold produce while sharing moʻolelo of the lands that nourish them. Students from Waipahu High School’s Culinary Arts Pathway offered dishes made from the very produce they had grown in their own campus nursery.

For the City and County of Honolulu, these gatherings were more than symbolic. They marked the start of a bold idea: transforming these 13 Skyline stations into food access hubs – places where local, healthy, and culturally rooted food is as accessible as catching a train. This initiative – now a finalist in the global Bloomberg Philanthropies 2025 Mayors Challenge – emerged from the urgent realities facing island residents.