Luxe, Zirx, Uber and the battle for parking

Your car is stuck. You are cruising even when the light is green. You dip in and out of tiny corners hoping for a parking space. The cars behind you are infuriated, the pedestrians regard you with trepidation. Congratulations — you are an asshole on the road. Take a moment to enjoy yourself because if Karmic cycles had any truth to it, you will soon get your just desserts (For example, you will soon have a reckless Uber pool driver with a smelly co-passenger).

Wouldn’t it be great to have an app that solves this parking problem for you?

Well, look no further — your urban, hipster wishes are about to come true! The battle for parking makes a lot of sense, it is a valuable commodity, it has great demand and people are usually frustrated by it. The propensity to pay is there and so are the “runners” (Or couriers or whatever it is that you would like to call the people on the road, more on that in another article). Luxe and Zirx are the major players on the land grab for managed parking. Both are doing pretty well and have also been making forays into the enterprise space — with corporate discounts to sweeten the deal and using employees to spread the word.

Can it last?

Probably, but not really. The worldly hypothesis around parking apps like Luxe and Zirx is that we will continue to own cars. Uber runs counter to that. Uber imagines a world where everyone gets a ride on demand, ownership of a car is not a status symbol and parking is something you dont have to worry about. Don’t get me wrong, parking will remain a problem for the foreseeable future in urban markets. But suburbia will not suffer from this problem, nor will the people who use Uber.

Would I use it?

The experience, if packaged with Metromile, will be a much more predictive experience. It will objectively be better than having a wait or a lead time. Currently, there is an app to summon it but you will have to wait.

Why wait?

There has to be a better way no?