This European city is missing a service common in Australia - and we don’t miss it

When my partner and I arrived in Aarhus, the second-biggest city in Denmark, we assumed we could grab an Uber to our new home. There we were, phones out, Uber app loading and … nothing. Where there’s usually a map, the screen was blank.

We checked Didi and same deal. Too tired to continue searching, we wandered to the nearest taxi rank and hopped in a cab.

Uber operated in Denmark for just three years before exiting the market.

Within days, we realised what we had thought was a temporary app crash was actually something else entirely: there are no rideshare platforms in Denmark.

Instead of jumping in a car when you’re running late or ordering meal deliveries when you’re too tired to eat, everyone here cycles, walks or takes public transport. No one I know orders food to be home-delivered.

Admittedly, Aarhus is much smaller than our home city of Melbourne. But there’s something to be said for a society that values people’s quality of life enough to eschew small conveniences for the greater good.

Denmark wasn’t always a nation without, though. Uber entered the market here in 2014, and at its peak had 2000 drivers. But after complaints to police, protests, court cases over the legality of the business models, and a new taxi law, it exited the market just three years later.

Associate Professor Anna Ilsøe, a digital markets and workplace relations researcher at the University of Copenhagen, says Uber didn’t leave due to a lack of customers – other platforms such as cleaning service Hilfr have successfully become part of the economy – but the taxi safety law and collective agreement requirements for drivers made it “unattractive for Uber to have its business here”.

There are two schools of thought about gig workers: the first is that independent contractors engaged on platforms like Uber are entrepreneurs. They do work on an informal and on-demand basis, while valuing flexibility and being able to work whenever they want. Others argue the gig economy exploits usually marginalised people (many app-based gig workers are migrants). They don’t control prices, don’t know what they will be paid before each shift, do not have guaranteed hours, and are required to cover costs like providing their own vehicle, petrol, and insurance.

Australia is a big user of rideshares and delivery services, with IBIS World estimating the industry recorded $756.8 million in revenue between 2019-24. So while consumer demand is booming, it comes at a cost. In Victoria, more than 900 workers have been injured since 2016. Nationally, at least 13 people have died in have died in accidents in the past few years.

“If we want that convenience of cheap transport ... we need to think about how we value that,” says Dr Fiona Macdonald, the policy director of Industrial and Social at the Centre for Future Work. “If it takes some poor, uninsured guy not paid for his time 45 minutes to deliver us chocolate on a moped or bike, that’s not a reasonable way for us to expect to get our food.”

Though the Danes were on the front foot with introducing worker protections, Australia is only just starting to play catch-up. The Albanese government is in the process of implementing a suite of workplace legislations that include gig economy workers being treated as employees and paid a minimum wage.

As Dr Tim Dean from the Ethics Centre explains: “For most of history, we wanted meaningful work where labour was attached in a meaningful way to the output we produced. If you were a baker, for example, your value was more than just the money you made – it was in feeding the community.”

Yet over the past 150 years, we’ve seen a huge shift in our views on work and the creation of a business structure that, at its core, elevates the algorithm over the human being. “As consumers, to get the benefits of cheap food delivery and ridesharing, you have to treat the human worker as a means to an end,” Dean says.

Uber has warned that any changes to Australian laws could see customers pay up to 85 per cent more for services. But when you think about it, that just means some of our most vulnerable workers will have access to a liveable wage and fair working conditions – things most of us take for granted.

“We established those standards as minimum standards for everyone else – why would these people be exceptions to the rule because we need better transport or want cheaper food?” Macdonald asks.

I ask if rideshares fill an important gap in Australia, where getting from the suburbs to the city – where so many companies are still headquartered – is still no mean feat.

“Clearly, we need affordable, flexible transport options – it’s not an either/or scenario. We can also resolve these problems in more creative ways. COVID showed that working from home works, and highlighted the possibility of large organisations having hubs in large suburban areas, rather than just requiring everyone to transport themselves into the city.”

Five months into living in Denmark, I don’t really miss Ubers. Sure, it’s a bit annoying to walk in the rain or think ahead about cooking dinner, but we adapted pretty quickly. When I ask my Danish friends if they miss ride shares, they shrug and point to their bikes.

Caroline Zielinski is a freelance writer based in Denmark.

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