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Uber set for Danish return after seven years away

RIdesharing app Uber will return to Copenhagen in 2025 after the company agreed a deal with Danish taxi firm Drivr to operate the service in the Scandinavian country.

Published: 16 August 2024 10:39 CEST
Uber set for Danish return after seven years away
Uber branding in Warsaw, Poland. The company is set to return to Copenhagen in 2025 in a partnership with a Danish taxi company. Photo: Toby Melville/Reuters/Ritzau Scanpix

Under a new deal, Uber will provide the app while Drivr will be contracted to provide drivers and cars in keeping with the existing taxi laws.

“We have found the best of two worlds with a mobility giant providing a service no one else can and a local taxi company that follows Danish laws and knows the city and already has drivers on the street,” Drivr’s CEO Bo Svane told newswire Ritzau.

Uber withdrew from Denmark in 2017 after a new taxi law was passed requiring mandatory fare meters in cabs and seat occupancy detectors to activate the airbags.

The company said the following year that it was willing to return to the Danish market under a “different model”.

READ ALSO: Denmark scraps taxi laws on small islands

“In 2017 we were a company focused on confrontation and not cooperation. In 2024, we are a company that works together with several different partners all over the world,” the head of Uber in northern Europe, Maurits Schönfeld, said in a statement reported by Ritzau.

Essentially, the deal means that passengers will now be able to order Drivr taxis using the Uber app. The service will attract customers and benefit both companies, the two firms said.

“If you have a good experience as a customer with a good app, you need to have a good driver on the other side. If you have both you can really see the magic happen and the market increase,” Schönfeld said.

The Uber director said a similar model had been used by the company in other parts of Europe to great success.

“The problem-free experience is the same all over the world. Whether you’re in Cape Town or now Copenhagen, it’s the same solution and the same app,” he said.

One of the Uber app’s functions is the ability to see where your driver is and how far away they are. You can also share your journey with friends and family so they can follow your progress.

“At the same time, you know when you want a car that it will be there in five minutes,” Schönfeld said.

Drive’s Bo Svane said that that familiarity and ease of use of the Uber app would benefit the Danish company.

“We know that when it’s easier to use something, that’s what you’ll do,” he said, adding he hoped the service would attract both tourists and Copenhageners.

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TRANSPORT

Danish cities rake in record amounts from parking 

Danish municipalities are receiving record amounts in the form of parking fees. Politicians have denied parking is being used to boost municipal finances.

Published: 27 August 2024 13:33 CEST
Danish cities rake in record amounts from parking 

Motorists in Denmark last year sent over a billion kroner in total to municipalities in the form of parking fees, broadcaster DR reports based on a review of municipal parking revenues in 2023.

The 1.1 billion kroner in total received by municipalities comprises paid parking, permits and fines. It is a record amount for a single year.

Motorists’ organisation FDM, which conducted the review, said the annual amount had been “increasing steeply throughout the ten years we’ve been following it” in comments to DR by its senior consultant, Dennis Lange.

Unsurprisingly, Copenhagen is the city with the highest parking revenues at 649 million kroner. It is followed by Aarhus, Frederiksberg, Aalborg and Odense, all of which saw parking revenues go up last year.

FDM was critical of the trend and suggested that municipalities were introducing paid parking with the primary purpose of raising money.

READ ALSO: How do you appeal against a parking fine in Denmark?

“We can see an increase, not least in recent years, where municipalities are openly saying, ‘Well, we need money in the municipal accounts. What can we do? Let’s put up paid parking’, which is illegal,” Lange told DR.

“You can have paid parking but it must be for traffic, not financial reasons,” he added.

Traffic laws allow local authorities to charge for parking if the charge has the purposes of limiting the number of cars or to cover the costs of constructing and maintaining the car park.

FDM said it had filed a complaint with public body Ankestyrelsen over one municipality in particular, Helsingør, after a member of the Helsingør town council told local media that a new paid car park was away to raise funding for the municipality.

In comments to DR, Helsingør Municipality’s elected councillor Malthe Jacobsen denied this was the case.

“We did it to get fewer cars in the city centre. Because we can see that traffic is just increasing. More and more cars are coming and it is getting harder for people to find a parking space,” he said.

Jutland town Silkeborg received 12 million kroner from parking last year, an increase of 49.5 percent from the year before.

Councillor Peter Sig Kristensen in Silkeborg said parking fees were for “a healthy town, a calmer town, while also ensuring there are parking options so we can support local business.”

Decisions by cities to introduce more paid parking are not surprising according to Ismir Mulalic, an associate professor at Copenhagen Business School’s Department of Economics who has researched parking and transport economy.

“We are getting more and more cars and they have to be parked somewhere. Land is getting more expensive, especially in the cities, so it is not surprising that payment is being taken for a limited resource like a parking space,” he told DR.

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