Rail transit line will result in millions more in annual income
July 8, 2025
Access to reliable public transit can benefit workers by making commuting more affordable and enabling people to work farther from home. It’s especially helpful for low-income workers, who might not have the money to own or maintain a vehicle. But it’s difficult to get a sense of how mass transit impacts a local labor market more broadly, because transportation access is just one of many factors that affect where people live and work.
In new research supported by the Upjohn Institute’s Early Career Research Awards, Justin Tyndall examined how a new rail transit project, the Honolulu Skyline, is shaping the workforce. His findings suggest that the Skyline, when completed, will have a small but meaningful impact on the share of workers using public transportation and will modestly increase the overall employment rate. Those changes, though, will result in considerable gains for the local economy—including millions more in annual income for the island of Oahu.
Tyndall’s research also points to a new way to assess the impact of public infrastructure proposals.
Transit use is rising among workers at all income levels in Oahu
The Skyline opened its first nine stations in 2023. Four more stations are expected to open by the end of 2025, followed by six more in 2031. The final two stations necessary to complete the proposed Skyline will open at a later date to be announced.
Tyndall’s analysis shows that, in the long run, the Skyline is expected to increase the share of workers using mass transit (bus or rail), including both low-income and high-income workers. His model estimates that 9 percent of high-income workers will use transit to commute—half a percentage point higher than without the first phase of the Skyline—and projects that 10.8 percent will do so once the entire system is completed. Among low-income workers, 19.3 percent are expected to use mass transit when construction is finished, compared to 18 percent without rail service.
Overall, the completed Skyline is predicted to raise the share of Oahu workers commuting by transit from 13.2 to 15 percent.
Tyndall also found that overall commute times will increase slightly—by 21 seconds—when the rail line is complete. Although public transit often takes longer than car trips, trip length is just one of many considerations people make about commuting, and this increase in commute time is small.
The completed Skyline will also modestly increase the employment rate, from 66.4 percent to 66.8 percent. But that small growth in employment will result in $250 million more in annual income for people on the island of Oahu, or roughly $250 per person.
New ways of measuring mass transit’s impact
Policymakers debating new transit projects often focus on the most easily measurable metrics: overall costs of construction and change in commute times. But the potential benefits of mass transit are wide-ranging and complex.
Using a combination of Census data and real-time commuting data from a logistics firm, Tyndall modeled the likely effects of the Skyline rail system on employment and transit behavior across Oahu. His research points to a new, more holistic way for policymakers to consider the benefits of a proposed transit project, including the well-being and incomes of affected workers and others in the community.