Steve Paselk’s recent letter (“Letters: Regulate Uber Drivers — For Their Own Good”) about Uber drivers purportedly earning a mere $9.21 per hour is unintentionally ironic, given the Honolulu City Council’s decision Wednesday to cap surge pricing (“City Council Votes To Cap Uber And Lyft Prices”) for all local ride-hail drivers.

The study Paselk quoted contains myriad errors in its methodologies, but one of its biggest is its failure to take fares earned during surge-priced periods into account. As anyone who’s driven for a ride-hail service, myself included, can tell you, these surges are the only means by which the vast majority of Uber and Lyft drivers earn a decent wage.

Regrettably, a majority of the council fails to grasp the whole point of surge-pricing: to ensure enough vehicles remain available during periods of peak usage. Surge levels are directly proportionate to demand, and absent this equilibrium, Uber and Lyft would almost certainly end up with the same extended-length waits emblematic of the taxi industry — a primary reason consumers began abandoning them in the first place and switching to ride-hailing services. 

Finally, the taxi industry is one of the few in the consumer world in which demand-based pricing isn’t already the norm: Look no further than airlines doubling or even tripling fares the week before Christmas for proof. 

— Jeff Kirk, Honolulu

Rail agency has the right to record audit interviews (June 8)

I found your recent story on State Auditor Les Kondo’s negative and almost bullying reaction to the fact that HART wants employees interviewed by Kondo to be able to record their statements disturbing (“State Auditor Says Rail Agency Is Interfering With His Work”). If the auditor is recording them and will not let HART or the employee interviewed access to the recording, it stands to reason this should be allowed.

Audits were originally to offer an agency suggestions on how to improve their operations. All too often now, state and city audits only look for “gotcha” moments that will grab headlines.

Like the disputed city audit, I also find it difficult to believe that the auditor’s office has the in-house expertise to adequately review as complex a subject as the Honolulu rail project without hiring outside financial experts in the first place. This alone should make the audit’s findings suspect.

I also found former Attorney General Michael Lilly’s assertion that HART’s desire to record its employees’ interviews would be in violation of the state’s whistleblower statute absurd. It appears to me that allowing the interviewee to record his or her interview actually protects the employee more that it restricts the opportunity to turn whistleblower.

— Hal Barnes, Kailua