There’s an app for that, if you’ve got the disposable income. (Photo by Phae)

Just in time for taxi rates to shoot up, D.C. is getting a new livery service of sorts with Uber, a smartphone app that will hail you one of the city’s luxury sedans instead of a dingy old cab.

Founded in June 2010 in San Francisco, Uber soft-launched here last month, making Washington its sixth U.S. market, along with San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Seattle and New York. (It also recently started in Paris.)

Uber recruits drivers and owners of livery sedans—the ubiquitous black Lincoln Towncar, for example—to offer on-demand service during the hours when they are not hired by private clients. For many drivers, the company estimates, much of the day is spent idling between clients and could be filled with spot hires.

Functionally, Uber is akin to Taxi Magic or any other app—there are versions for iOS and Android; sorry, Blackberry—that allows people seeking a ride find one rather than flailing their arms in the middle of the street or fumbling around for a taxi company’s phone number. Only here, the target customers are decidedly upmarket.

“Date nights, business travel, picking up clients, attorneys use it so they can work on the way to the office—those are billable hours,” says Travis Kalanick, Uber’s CEO who flew in for the app’s official D.C. launch tomorrow. Kalanick, a 35-year-old veteran developer, says he founded the company last year because “it’s really hard to get a cab in San Francisco and we wanted to get around in style.”

The preferred customer in D.C. has a similar profile, says Ryan Graves, Uber’s chief of operations, who called the 2,000 locals who have already downloaded the app “people who value their time” and want something “hyper efficient and very elegant.”

Uber’s founders won’t divulge the formula it uses to calculate rates, which it negotiates with each of the 60 or so drivers it has enlisted here so far. But is generally about 50 to 75 percent more than the cost of a hailed cab, Kalanick says. Systemwide, the company says its customers spend about $100 a month on its services.

And the company has strong financial backing. It recently completed a $32 million round of funding, during which it received investments from firms like Goldman Sachs and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ venture capital fund.

During a preview lunch at Graffiato, Uber displayed on a large monitor “God’s-eye” maps of its various operations around the country and in Paris. Unsurprisingly, 1 p.m. on a Wednesday was pretty dead, though on the D.C. map, we could see available cars clustered on K Street and around Georgetown, with one car in Virginia apparently en route to Dulles International Airport.

Much like the rest of the livery business, peak hours are rush hours and evenings, Kalanick says, especially on Fridays and Saturdays. It’s unclear how many Towncars would flood H Street NE in the wee hours on a weekend night, but one can see the appeal to upper-income revelers trying to get home from Dupont Circle, Georgetown and perhaps close suburbs.

For daytime business, Uber’s target is even more apparent. Reviewing the map, Kalanick mentioned his app could very well be used by “the lobbyist on his way to Congress.”