 think tech away civil engagement lives here I will live in one of my favorite subjects here this is a think tech community matters I'm Jay Fidel and I believe that the community of Honolulu like like any society is a function of how well you can get around transportation is critical it's right up there at the top of our priorities we cannot you know have a good economy we cannot have a good society we cannot do what we want to do without transportation there's a lot of talk about transportation these days at this table we have transportation people coming in from all sides talking about the modern view of transportation and indeed you know Hawaii and Honolulu especially we're sort of on the cusp of a new world of transportation because of that technology and I'm going to tell you guys forgive me one minute more I want to tell you guys that technology is our middle name we've been in business now so it's because nonprofit for 18 years and we follow technology we love technology we love disruptive technologies and the only really sad thing is that uber was not invented here we would have really liked that but it is changing the world tie with the child you're changing the world you're welcome to our show what a wonderful introduction thank you thank you so much for having us is the is the uber senior operations manager I wish I had your job and West soccer motor was the driver for uber and a concerned citizen yeah so thank you for coming down at both of you thank you so tell us about uber give us a sort of the lay of the land what is uber and it has had remarkable success it is truly a perfect example of disruptive technology that is making life better wherever it goes yes I mean I think you just did a great intro right there but so uber it's it's an app that you know you get on your smartphone and it allows you to get a ride at a top of a button in a matter of minute minutes yeah I've had that experience can I talk about my experience okay then you can talk about how you you address my sure sure so I want to go I want to go anywhere a few blocks or a few miles as I'm getting out of the elevator here at the Pioneer Plaza I bring up my uber app and I say I want to ride okay immediately there's a thing showing all the uber drivers within how many blocks and it says you know you're gonna have a ride in a minute minute you know this is not possible with conventional taxicabs never was never will be sorry okay and and I say yeah I'll take that I'll take a minute and send send the uber and one minute later there's a guy right there and he says Jay and I say Marvin because now we know each other knows who I am I know who he is okay and I get in the car he knows where I'm going you know I mean I could I do always have a nice chat with the uber driver but I don't have to because he knows where I'm going and when I get there you know this happened the first time I said what do I owe you okay give you my credit card what you want cash what do you want no no no no all done I throw up at the tip and all done just get out of the car it's quite amazing it's effortless as smooth as silk mm-hmm how is it from the driver's side West it's just that simple I mean I get the request I go to that spot it's just sometimes it's hard to find the exact spot because of the mapping but and then I know the person's name and sometimes their photo is there yeah but I know the person's name and so I go up there and I say you know whatever let Jay Jay I'm Wes and then I wrote on my window and then they jump in yeah and then then the apple tell me where they're headed to and then I just take them there and I drop them off and same thing I said bye and you know they go on their way yeah you make friends yeah no I've made a number of friends actually and it's really fun to be honest it's really fun and I tell my wife I like doing it I mean it's a great part I think I mean yeah and it's it's an app about the size of your thumbnail in your in your eyes yeah that's that that's what it yeah it's an app brilliant brilliant why didn't I have that idea so so this is this this works for you you'll have a good time you meet people you know you you you satisfy people you give them a break in their daily life yes yes I do you rendering services gratification in that and you know I must say that it's a it's a good experience for both sides this is you know another indication both sides of the equation and it also allows you to have that part-time job you get an Uber cab it's somebody local it's not talking about somebody from Des Moines somebody local who's doing it this is the people this is a democratization of the process yeah yeah and the nice thing too is that sometimes they become tour guide being in Hawaii and that happened yesterday oh yeah I want you to take them around yeah I know I picked them up that he appeared in by my house in Kanioa and then they the curse the shortest route was going through the Paletano and they asked so can you take us around the island so I took him around Makapu I mean it was a nice conversation with this couple I stopped at Makapu look out they took pictures I stopped at the low look out they took pictures back to their hotel and they loved it that's not going to happen in a conventional car that's not that won't furthermore that this goes through a conversation we'll have about surge pricing furthermore if I get out of the Pioneer Plaza building on a dark street in the middle of the night I'm going to get that that Uber cab anyway and because he's around because he's incentivized to be around these and there are some drivers that really want that three o'clock in the morning experience yes and I want them to be there try a conventional cab at three o'clock in the morning and see what happens I never did you won't be able my wife and I took a trip a few months ago to Australia we went to Sydney Melbourne and and Tasmania Hobart Tasmania and each one of those three places we took everything with Uber and it was it was joy I mean it was just great way to get around and just like you was you know the the driver would say hey can I show you some stuff let me take you around and it was it was like we had a friend in Hobart that we didn't know we had so tell us about the argument going on in the city council because there are those who don't like you there are those who would oppose you and try to pull out your wings on every occasion who come up with the silliest arguments to make you go away because you threatened them tell us about it definitely so right now at the city council there's bill 35 and it was introduced by Honolulu council chair Ernie Martin and what this bill does is it really tries to push Uber into an outdated taxi cab model and when I say outdated I don't even mean today's taxi cab model I'm talking about the taxi cab model from decades ago that was actually already repealed for taxi cab drivers in Honolulu so it's bringing back regulations that have already been repealed and it makes things harder for not only Uber and Lyfts and you know rideshare platforms but but also taxi taxi companies as well it's called shooting yourself in the foot your words yeah no but I mean it would make ride sharing less affordable less reliable and less convenient yeah that's a real problem because what we have we're on a roll here I mean I was listening to Wayne Yoshioka's piece on Hawaii public radio that's where we came from Hawaii public radio and he was talking about the last hearing in the city council and he pointed out that for for every one person who came there to support that this bill 35 there were four people who supported bills I mean who opposed bill 35 so clearly Uber has the you know the public is on Uber's side of this equation this is an uphill thing and you know it what it is is is rational technology the sign of the future you know versus somebody who wants to go back to the past and rely on old chums and political manipulations in order to stop you this is exactly what Hawaii does not need at all I could not agree you know oftentimes this bill is sold as a consumer protection bill you know we're trying to we're concerned about public safety and protecting consumers but the reality is there have been zero complaints about Uber or Lyft since the city became our regulator more than a year ago and so you know the public's not asking for this bill they're really not it's it was really introduced at you know the urging of a handful of not even taxicab drivers but taxicab company owners yeah that's what it is they have an investment in the cabs everyone lose the investment they know that the Uber model doesn't require an investment you know it's a sort of the perfect model actually everybody wins because the the driver like Wes the car anyway and it'll you know encourage you to keep the car in spiffy shape too I'm sure it does because you want that and you know that the investment is well there is no investment it's it's it's an act the size of my thumbnail that's what it is and it makes the world go around yeah exactly I mean and I mean for for Uber drivers I mean Wes is here he can speak to you know his own personal story but what we hear most often is that drivers appreciate the flexibility of the Uber app so like you said you know with some traditional taxicab companies the way the models work is you pay you know sometimes up to a thousand dollars a week just to use someone you know a fleet owners taxicab and you know just have their name there so that you can get those street hails the taxi cab company owner could get rich that way off the back of the driver may I say yeah and so I mean these drivers are just you know trying to dig themselves out of a hole every single week whereas with Uber you know drivers are using their own personal vehicles and everything's been checked you know there's there's still rigorous background checks you week we make sure that all of their vehicle documents are up to date these are safe vehicles but you know you you have the flexibility to drive really whenever you want you don't have to tell us when you want to drive you know and Wes earlier we were we were talking and he said you know it says on the app that I've been driving for a year and a half but I only recently started driving again a few months ago and that's kind of the beauty of it if you want to take a six-month hiatus you can just make sure if you you know if any of your documents expired just reupload them and can start again the ultimate expression of the most desired gig economy it's really about flexibility that's what it is so Wes you wrote a you wrote a piece was a letter to the editor of the yeah can you just summarize that letter for us well because it was on I I was kind of introduced to the bill 35 by accident I heard about it actually I wasn't even active with the the Facebook group that the drivers have so I and I wrote that piece many to the City Council I just CC the letter to the editor on that and the whole thing is that you know they want to picked up your letter yeah carbon copy they loved it so much yeah there's only a carbon copy to the star amortizer and so my whole thing was you know you want to regulate us and then but there's other things about search pricing that in other industries it always happens you know airline tickets go up during Christmas sure yeah sure you don't want to ask the guy next to you in the plane what he's paying because you know it won't be the same as what you're paying yeah and then example restaurants they charge higher for dinner prices a lot of restaurants they have a dinner menu and a lunch menu but the food is the same yeah so you know those type of things happen in normal commerce business but then in our situation you know it's the same thing there's there's a high demand and so the prices tend to go up like in any other industry real estate is another example when people want to live in Kahala and the price is just skyrocketed and nobody complains about it right it's the market it's the market it's an essential element of our capital society yes the market so I that's why I say just let the market do its thing and have the consumer choose if we're too high at that time tell them take a cab I mean they can choose to pick the cab yeah let me add a point when I take my Uber rides and it tells me that Wes is a block away it also says what it's gonna cost me before I push the I want a ride button so I know exactly what it is and it's so easy for me to push the back button and say no I don't say no you know it's it's a perfect example of a free market society where you can say no if you if you don't like it if that's too high for you go somewhere else at three o'clock in the morning oh that that's what I mean I mean let the consumer you just educate the consumer that they can always say no there's there's the bus and there's the conventional cat they can call their mom and tell them pick them up I mean the same yeah that's exactly right I mean we we really believe in price transparency and so that's why you see your price before you even decide whether or not you want to take the ride and one of the big things in this bill is it's capping surge pricing and you know it's like you said this is free market economics at work and so it's really troublesome when when the government steps in and tries to regulate the pricing and with Honolulu taxi pricing it's historically been controlled by the city and what happens when when the city is controlling the pricing is that drivers will our taxi cab companies will choose to charge the max they can and so they're always they have the option to charge less if they'd like to but all of the taxi companies are charging the max and twice as much as what Uber exactly 90% of the time Uber is 40% cheaper than a Honolulu taxi in fact Honolulu taxis are the highest price taxis in the nation and so we have you know we have city council and I mean it's not everyone in the city council but this bill I'll address the bill in particular this bill is you know trying to put Uber's pricing model into a taxi cab model where we already know that these taxi cabs are the most expensive in the nation and so we really believe in serving the community and offering affordable reliable rides to people and it really doesn't work with this model yeah not only that but when you get in a taxi cab conventional taxi cab I remember I was a taxi cab driver in the 60s I mean I looked at all the guy would the driver would flip the flag okay big flag clunk okay to start ticking right you did not any idea what it was going to cost you at the beginning of the ride you had no clue and if you went the wrong way got lost decided you're going to take you round and round some of them did okay it could be it could be incredibly expensive much more expensive than it should have been and so this is really refreshing to see that app come up and say it's going to cost you six dollars to go there we know what's going to cost you you know it's going to cost you and you can get out of the cab with confidence knowing that you're you know your your charge will be on your credit card it'll be exactly what we promised you at the beginning that is truly amazing so amazing that I get excited about it I get emotional I can you tell I'm gonna get emotional like this we take a break let's take a break okay I'm Keeley Ikeena and I'm here every other week on Mondays at 2 o'clock p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii together in Hawaii together we talk with some of the most fascinating people in the islands about working together working together for a better economy government and society so I invite you into our conversation every other Monday at 2 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii broadcast network join us for Hawaii together I'm Keeley Ikeena Aloha okay we're back we're live I got up over my emotional reaction to this with Wes Wes Sakamoto an Uber driver and Tabitha Chow she's an Uber senior operations manager right here in Honolulu that's something so I like to talk about vision I looked about you know what it looks like going forward and I to sort of set the stage for this I tell you we talked to the Department of Transportation all the time we talked to the energy poly forth we talked to Hawaiian Electric about the future of transportation and you know we know it's electric we know it's you know it's it's it's cars that are electric but it may be you know time-slice cars it may be you know it may be automated cars I suspect it will be and it may be automated cars that are time-slice right mm-hmm and you know Uber if I can think ahead like that and these guys in Hawaiian Electric and the Department of Transportation can think ahead so can Uber so is Uber Uber has got a lot of ideas on the plate and I first I'd like to explore you know all the things that you're looking at corporate-wise about transportation in the future on a national international basis absolutely I mean we you know we're a technology company and so we're constantly thinking of ways that you know we can be right there at the forefront of technology and so you know we're heavily invested in autonomous vehicles and you know it's something that we're testing around the nation it's it's a really exciting exciting thing you know if so there's autonomous vehicles and you know something that we're also exploring are you know these basically I guess the best way to describe it is sort of like a large drone that you can fit in and so what we're doing is we're working with cities right now we're working with LA and I believe it's Houston in Texas a city in Texas and we're working with the city planners there and you know the the departments the government governor's office is there to to really figure out how can we solve these transportation problems and I mean that's not just in these cities where you know we're working with cities around the world to help solve these problems but and those cities particularly exciting you know within the next few years we really hope to to bring to market this option where you can go to the top of the building and you know catch your your Uber ride fly over traffic and land in another another building so we'll we'll start out with having some pilots right there but this is your new future yeah there'll be pilots there in the beginning and you know as we're testing and making sure that you know everything's working as it should but yeah that's definitely in the goal is autonomous and it's a really exciting future but you know when you when you are innovative then you walk down the street new ideas come to you you carve the marble and there's a new idea right there and sometimes it's right at your feet is something you should have thought of sometimes it's a few steps away but if you have the right state of mind and I think Uber does then you're gonna come on all these new ideas you know one of the things that struck me recently I don't know if you're doing this Western is Uber eats Uber eats I love that idea Uber eats you know we are actually now I believe our CEO just recently said that we are the largest food delivery service in at least the nation I believe it's the nation and you know Uber eats is a relatively new service for us a few months old yeah and I mean we're we're still learning you know like what's the best way to do this you know what what makes the best incentives for drivers and how can we truly make this fit into people's lives and it's incredibly popular and I will say that you know working with Uber I do get some Uber credits every month they now that we have Uber eats here in Honolulu all of my credits go to Uber eats I love it so much you know I'm constantly I mean I'm on now you know a first name basis with some of these restaurants and I love it I love Uber eats what it strikes me that if I wanted to have a picnic you know say is that Alamo on a park just for example and I could arrange this true Uber eats to have them deliver the food to me yeah from any restaurant that I choose with any menu that I choose I mean think of the think of the incredible you know party I would have it out so I mean this is this beautiful idea and it fits right in you know it's just an example of this kind of you know constant innovation always new ideas and and all these new ideas offer the benefit of the community they all work they work for the drivers they work for the customers they work for the restaurants too it's a miss that thing about the facilitation of transportation in our community makes our community a better more livable place but going back to multimodal so we got walking we got cycling we got we got cars in one or the other iteration like it or not we have the rail you know what did I miss did I miss something buses buses which are important so where's it all going to go which this is asking you for speculation but where is it going to go and what role is we're gonna play in sort of this this this landscape of the future this this pen and ink drawing of a future that will emerge for us you know in say 20 years what's what's it gonna look like and what role what role are you gonna play with I wish I could tell you I think 20 years it's crazy to think what could happen in 20 years just knowing that Uber is still in its infancy and we do have some of the greatest minds that you know exist I have met some of the most smart like the smartest was hard-working people I've ever met in my life just working at this company but I mean the way that we we sort of see ourselves is it's really as a platform for for various types of technology for various types of transportation and so you know right now we have Uber X we have the higher models which are over select and then you know in some some cities we also have bike options and really the future as we see it is Uber as a platform and I think it's a really exciting yeah you have you have a database of devoted customers you have a database of devoted drivers you have a database of devoted restaurants yeah and maybe retail in general you know exactly I mean it's very promising and so the question is when you look at this beautiful picture I consider it a sort of a renaissance about any given city when you let this unfold and then you compare that with the struggle that is that has been created by the people trying to put you out of business versus as simple as that what they're doing had you noticed is trying to put you out of business it's kind of you know it's it's it's awful and I just what do you think is going to happen here what are we facing here because it's like the ghost of Christmas future what is our city without Uber and Lyft and the like of these of the ride hailing companies what is the future of our city without you so I mean you know one of the things that we really think about too is you know we don't see taxi as you know our competitor we see that we're all a part of this transportation ecosystem and really what we're competing with is car ownership you know like in many cities where Uber is just a minute away people are giving up their vehicles kids aren't even getting their driver's license anymore the thought of drinking and driving doesn't even cross people's minds anymore those who use Uber often just recently gone exactly just recently Maui PD you know they've they've done study over the past few years they've had a huge decline in DUIs and you know they're doing some efforts on their parts but they credited Uber services like Uber for a lot of that decline you know when they when they have these checkpoints they see so many Uber drivers now in the front seat and they see who's in the back seat and they're like thank God that Uber is here and so really there's there's so many things that can be done and you know we have we have a military product here we have assist which is where drivers have taken a test to specifically people help people who need extra assistance so you learn how to fold a wheelchair properly and store it and you know really just training exactly and so we're we're always trying to find ways that we can better integrate into the community and here within Hawaii you know traffic's crazy and so when you're competing with car ownerships and we have a product called uber pool it's not yet in Honolulu Uber pool okay and so the idea there is to just get more people into cars yeah just have more people in each of the seats and that's leverage for everybody involved exactly and it's at a lower price you know you end up splitting the already 40% cheaper than a taxi in price yeah with you know with your neighbor and it's it's a really exciting future meanwhile you got a cope with all these silly arguments I mean I read enough to know that the thing with the the attack and the knife was completely rank and utter poppycock the thing with the with the pricing the surge pricing is also poppycock it's any port in a storm to attack you but my favorite one and I want to close with this and ask your reaction is the guy I remember his name but I won't mention it on the air who owns a taxi cab company who said if uber thinks we're making too much with these old rates why don't they raise their rates too then the public all the public will pay more and uber will make more money doesn't uber want that isn't uber into profit why doesn't uber just charge the public more won't that solve the problem and I thought to myself wow that's really special let's gouge the public across the board everybody and you know that's not what you're about that's exactly he's that's what he's about exactly I mean unfortunately it's an argument that we've heard from many of the taxi cab owners why don't you just raise your pricing and you know we're trying to serve the community here and people appreciate that uber is affordable and yeah it is it's very frustrating because you know they'll say that and then this next second say that we're not serving our community and we're not you know helping the elderly or those who are on low income and it's just how can you say that when you know you're also telling us to charge more to these very people I was the most ridiculous argument it shows you how how desperate how desperate these people are to attack you this way what they should do is look at your model and try to adapt their operation to your model you said that in your letter yeah yeah it would be a better idea better they get their own technology and do the same thing yeah yeah so we're at the end of our time and I'd like to offer you guys the opportunity to leave a message with our audience see the red light so West you go first what would you like people to remember about you being here and about this subject on that you know the opportunity to drive for uber has been very I guess very it's very rewarding for me because I just wanted some side income and instead of working for someone I mean I I've always got offered because I'm a golfer to work part-time as a card guy at a golf course but then this allowed me to work anytime I want and that's what that was a nice thing about it I work anytime I want I when I want to quit I just quit and then the pay is pretty decent for part-time gig there's a signing bonus now yeah there always was hoping for Western I get out of Pioneer Plaza here and I call up my uber application and lo and behold it's you well I got to refer you on my after you drive down the street and I say hi West and you say hi Jay I'm waiting for that moment it'd be a reunion okay your turn Tabitha what would you like to leave with people there's camera one I mean really I just want people to know that we are committed to Honolulu and we love being here and there are more than 3,000 local drivers who drive with uber and there are hundreds of thousands of riders who use uber every single month and 70 percent of them live here in Honolulu and so I just want everyone to know that you know we we are committed and we're gonna fight to stay here I'm with you thank you Tabitha thank you so much thank you thank you nice to see you I know we'll meet again okay