San Francisco is home to some of the worst traffic in the country (second only to LA, by one account), and a significant chunk of the congestion is caused by drivers looking for parking. One popular, though contested, stat holds that a 30 percent of urban traffic is comprised of cars endlessly circling the block looking for an open spot. Even if that figure is inflated, it doesn't take a genius to see that driving would be a lot more convenient if parking weren't such a pain.
Luxe is here to ease that hassle. The startup's parking service provides valets who meet you anywhere and park your car for just $5 an hour, or $15 a day. That's chump change for parking in San Francisco, where many lots charge nine bucks an hour. The service launched in the City by the Bay in October, and it's crazy low rates and laziness-enabling valets have proven so popular that Luxe is gearing up to take on the car-crazy LA area.
The company didn’t set out to reduce congestion; it simply wanted to solve an annoying problem---trying to park your damn car. Luxe is the “culmination of two or three years of frustration,” says Curtis Lee, CEO and co-founder. Two years ago, after an especially rough hunt for a spot, he started pondering “what I wanted parking to be.” The answer, as with so many bothersome tasks, is to pay someone else to do it.
In this case, that someone is an itinerant valet in a light blue Adidas jacket.
The premise is simple. Before you get going (or while you’re driving if you insist on driving while distracted), simply plug your destination into the Luxe app. The app (iOS only for now, Android should be here by the end of the year) tracks your location and pings a nearby valet to meet you. The goal, Lee says, is to have the valet arrive five to 10 minutes early so he’s not wasting much time, and you never have to wait. The valets pass criminal and driving background checks, go through a two-week training course, and prove they can handle a stickshift on San Francisco hills before they’re hired. They travel by foot, Razor scooter, or electric skateboard (seriously).
Cars are parked in a lot or in a garage, never on the street. If you want, your valet can swing by a gas station or car wash so your ride comes back fully fueled (for $7.99 plus the cost of gas) and squeaky clean ($40). Use the app to let Luxe know when you want your car back, and the valet will deliver it to you wherever you happen to be. The valets aren't allowed to accept tips, Lee says, so customers don't feel obligated to carry cash and cough up extra money.
There are geographical and time restrictions, at least for the moment: Within San Francisco, Luxe covers everywhere east of Golden Gate Park, which is about half the city. Its hours vary throughout the week (it's open until 2am on Friday and Saturday, 11 pm during the week), and if you don't pick your car up by closing time, you're hit with a $50 fee.
How can Luxe offer the parking, plus the valet service, for rates that are cheaper than most garages? It’s partly because of scale, Lee says. In the early days of beta testing, Luxe paid the garages’ regular fees. Now it has the volume to lease spots on a longterm basis for reduced cost. It helps that the companies it works with tend to own several garages, and have their own supply and demand issues. Say Company A has one garage two blocks from AT&T park, and another ten blocks away. During Giants games, the nearby garage will fill up, but the farther one likely won’t, because drivers don’t want to make the long walk. Luxe eliminates that hassle by picking the car up wherever the customer wants and having the valet do all that annoying walking (or scootering). That spreads demand over Company A’s two garages, generating more revenue. That makes Company A more likely to play ball with Luxe.
Luxe isn’t the only player here: There’s also Zirx, which offers a nearly identical parking service, but its valets wear black jackets. (We haven’t seen any West Side Story-style street fighting or romance between the groups yet, but stay tuned.) After launching in San Francisco in June, Zirx has since spread to Seattle, and is available on iOS and Android.
Luxe and its ilk do more than provide servants for people with the money to pay someone else to park their car. There's a trickle down benefit for everyone who drives or rides mass transit. Every car parked by a Luxe valet is a car that isn't aimlessly circling the block, adding to congestion. "It's probably a good thing," says Paul Supawanich, a senior associate with Nelson/Nygaard, a San Francisco-based transportation planning firm. It's true, he says, that for some people driving is the only viable option, and parking services like these could reduce total vehicle miles driven. Using a valet who knows where he's going takes the uncertainty---and wasted time, gas, and space---out of the parking search. It's free or nearly free street parking, Supawanich says, that really encourages people to drive. Luxe and Zirx will price parking---a limited good---based on demand, and they have an incentive (money) to pack cars into space efficiently.
After six months of beta testing, Luxe launched widely three weeks ago. “It's going great,” says Lee. "Basically every day demand is outstripping supply." The company is heavily recruiting more valets and keeping new customers on a waiting list. The app’s biggest users have been commuters who schlep into the city from the 'burbs. Two thirds of users are repeat customers who use the service more than twice per week, Luxe says. Next month, it will begin service in Venice and Santa Monica, where drivers' lust for easy parking outmatches San Francisco's. That'll be the last expansion move for the year, Lee says, but if things keep going well, there's more growth to come. "We're prepared for scale."
