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How likely is Uber to return to Denmark?

Denmark’s transport minister did not rule out a return for ride sharing service Uber in a recent interview, but the government is not unanimous on the issue.

Published: 6 February 2024 13:07 CET
How likely is Uber to return to Denmark?
Could Uber ever return to the Danish market? Illustration photo: Mike Blake/Reuters/Ritzau Scanpix

The coalition government appears to be at odds with itself about whether to allow shared lift service Uber to operate in Denmark again, after two of the three governing parties expressed apparently conflicting views on the matter.

Tax spokesperson Anders Kronborg of the Social Democrats contradicted Liberal (Venstre) transport minister Thomas Danielsen’s recent comments on a possible comeback for Uber or similar services.

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” but that is yet to happen.

More recently, taxi laws were last year eased on some of Denmark’s smaller islands to allow islanders to take passengers in return for payment without falling foul of taxi laws, or needing to fit their vehicle with a taxi metre.

Danielsen said last weekend in an interview with newspaper Politiken that he would not rule out a comeback for Uber.

“Uber can certainly solve many mobility challenges. But I’m not set on any one model,” he told the newspaper.

According to the minister, bus services in some parts of the country are not a sustainable model for public transportation.

The minister said potential alternatives could be ride sharing, shared taxis or an extension of the Flextrafik subsidised taxi system already used in areas with limited bus coverage.

Kronborg responded by saying to newspaper Ekstra Bladet that Danielsen “should think more carefully before making such a bombastic announcement”.

Uber created skewed competition when the company previously operated in Denmark from 2014-2017, according to Kronborg.

“That’s why I’m obviously saying now that I am not satisfied that the Minister of Transport is suggesting Uber will come back,” he said.

The government has appointed an expert advisory board to report to it with proposals on new public transport models that will boost mobility throughout Denmark. The report is due by the end of 2024.

Uber originally entered the Danish market in Copenhagen in 2014 and had 2,000 drivers at its peak.

But complaints to police, protests and court cases plagued the ride sharing firm, which eventually withdrew from Denmark in early 2017. Uber drivers were given fines in by courts in Denmark in 2016 for breaking taxi laws.

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TRAVEL NEWS

Do you really need to own a car living in Denmark?

Denmark is one of the most expensive countries in the world for owning a car, its public transport is one of the best, and if you want to cycle, it's mostly flat. There are few places where it makes more sense to ditch your car.

Published: 10 May 2024 16:35 CEST
Updated: 19 May 2024 08:30 CEST
Do you really need to own a car living in Denmark?

The case against owning a car in Denmark

Denmark’s Vehicle Registration Tax, together with VAT, more than doubles the cost of buying a petrol or diesel car, making owning a car considerably more expensive in Denmark than in its neighbours Germany and Sweden, although electric cars that cost less than 436,000 kroner are currently tax-exempt.

If you use a car to commute into Copenhagen, Aarhus, or Odense, you will also often find yourself stuck in traffic jams, with the Danish Roads Directorate estimating that Danes lose 365,000 hours to traffic jams every weekday, with the Motorring 3 motorway circling Copenhagen, other major access roads to Copenhagen, the E20 south of Odense, and the E45 on either side of Aarhus the most congested roads in the country.

Parking can also be expensive in Danish cities, costing as much as 500 Danish kroner for 24 hours for non-residents. 

How easy is it to get around inside Danish cities without a car? 

Denmark is a cycling nation.

According to Visit Denmark, in 2022, 25 percent of all trips under five kilometers across Denmark were done by bike, and 16 percent of all journeys of any kind. 

Copenhagen’s aim is for fully half of all trips to work and education to be done on bike by 2025. In 2019, the city was already on 44 percent. It’s a similar situation for smaller cities like Aarhus, Odense, Vejle, Aalborg and Esbjørg.

But even if you can’t or don’t want to cycle, you can still get by in most places without a car, thanks to Denmark’s excellent public transport networks.

Public transport in Denmark has significantly improved only over the last five years, with several new metro lines and light rail systems opening. 

With the Cityringen (M3) and Harbour lines (M4) opening in 2019 and 2020, respectively the Copenhagen Metro can now get you to most places in the city. 

Denmark scrapped its city tram systems in the 1960s and 1970s, with cities like Aarhus and Odense instead shifting to buses for public transport.

There has recently been a recent revival, however, with Aarhus, Odense and Copenhagen all opening or building new tram/light rail systems.

Odense Letbane opened in 2022, making it easy to get to the out of town shopping area where IKEA and other superstores are based and also to the new hospital. Aarhus Letbane opened in 2017, and takes passengers all the way up the coast around the city, from Odder in the south to Grenaa in the north.

Copenhagen next year plans to open a light-rail system which will travel in a ring around the city’s outer suburbs linking Lundtofte in the north to Ishøj in the southwest. 

This will end one of the big drawbacks of the city’s “five finger” transport corridor plan: that while it is quick to travel from the outer suburbs to the centre and vice versa, it is complicated to travel between suburbs which are on a different transport corridors, for example from Albertslund to Herlev, or from Birkerød to Buddinge. 

Even before that opens, however, so long as you are only travelling in and out from the centre, it is extremely convenient to get from central Copenhagen to its suburbs and surrounding towns using the S-trains, which run from 5am until half-past midnight on weekdays, and all night on Fridays and Saturdays. 

This means you can eat out and party with your friends until the small hours, and still normally get back to Køge, Høje Taastrup, Frederikssund, Farum and Hillerød, the furthest out stops. 

Where might you struggle without a car? 

Plans for a light railway or tram between Vejle and Billund, or between the so-called Triangle Region between the cities of Vejle, Kolding and Fredericia have so far come to nothing, and even though the local and regional bus and train services can be good, it’s certainly tougher to survive without a car if you don’t live on Zealand, near Aarhus, or perhaps on Funen. 

Many people do in fact live without owning a car even in the more far-flung villages on Jutland, and on islands like Bornholm, Lolland and Falster.

They still manage to get everywhere they want to go, but it does require waiting. It’s certainly possible to live without a car, but you might feel limited in where to and when you can travel. 

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