Safe to travel from airport to Noida around midnight?

burf

you do NOT have to worry about NOIDA at all. i have been living in NOIDA for more than 15 years. it is perfectly fine place.

although yea, it could be possible that cab drivers ask for inflated amounts - but then you can ask your hotel to arrange something... or if nothing works out then PM me and i will arrange for a radio cab to wait for you on the airport

GandhiGirl

I appreciate that. I have heard this from a few Noida folks. Thay all think it is safe as well. I live in NYC so I tend to be weary in general.

karuna

See now this I would call scaremongering. The reason that story is so famous and shocking is precisely because it's so uncommon. And who has not heard of rapes and murders by taxi drivers in other big cities round the world? It's hardly a Delhi or India-specific risk.

What else are you supposed to do? I wouldn't want to be sitting in arrivals until daybreak, and for such a tiny, tiny chance of your taxi driver being a homicidal maniac....daft.

Aishah

I agree with Shashank's comments on his Radio Cabs thread - pre-paid taxis are certainly not the best and whilst not 'scaremongering' there have been more than one incident of problems with pre-paid taxi unvetted drivers. Annually there has been a case or two in regard to robbing and also another murder.
There's no problems with pre-paid autos from railway stations, but from the airport I stopped using the pre-paid taxis about 3 years ago. Instead paid slightly more from the Delhi Tourism booth inside the airport. The cabs were always fine - well looked after and the drivers were regular employees of this organisation. Arriving very late at night and travelling into the inner city of Delhi has been, so far, perfectly safe for me on my own. However, I have a rule in that only one driver is in the car with me and no 'hanger-on' friend of the driver. (This is after a nasty incident happening when two men were in the front of the taxi I was using in Jaipur in '99). With pre-paid, frequently there was the 'extra' person.
After reading Shashank's Thread I am now going to try Radio Cabs-there is also a booth in both International and Domestic Airports.

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brownboy66

LOL - now you see, having been to both NY and Noida, I would feel more nervous about travelling alone to New York than I would to Noida! Isn't that strange! I guess its a matter of perspective.

Yes the incident was shocking - and I was struggling to understand why that incident was anymore indicative of an unsafe climate here - as opposed to the same thing happening in any other country - which of course it does? I think what atala was saying is that its not more or less safe here - more to the point don't simply assume that the prepay cabs are ok because everyone says so.

karuna

I hope that's what was meant. I don't know though that everyone says that prepaid cabs are always OK, isn't it more that they are a sensible option? Dial-a-cab sounds like a good alternative though.

atala

It may be a simple matter of semantics, or of probability. Until that incident (the murder case) I thought prepaid was 100% safe in terms of assaults from the driver, plus the benefit of no fraud option since everything is paid already. That conclusion of 100% safety was falsified by the incident and that is what I am stating.

Dilliwala

Noida is not less safe than Delhi or Gurgaon, just because it's in UP. Haryana is not a lot better than UP as a whole, and by what I hear the 'spillover' effect is worse in Gurgaon than in Noida. That's not to say Gurgaon is unsafe.
And let's not even start talking about Delhi, square-area wise. But none of us living here consider it unsafe at day or night, with the "usual" precautions of course.
BTW, I live in an area generally considered safer than most (it is) - and not 200 m from here, in the next lane, an old lady living all alone got murdered last year. Kids abroad, and an eye on the property and all that.
I still haven't started thinking of moving, though.

capt_mahajan

My comments (with the emphasis on slightly, note) are based on whatever I have seen and heard from close family living there for 30 years (much has improved since then, I know), plus my observations whenever I have gone there.


Like the editors say, with shaky knees, I stand by my story

Dilliwala

Which is fine. Mine were also based on personal experiences - rellies living there over 20 years, some friends, and infrequent trips across the river myself.
I'm not saying it's ideal (but then which city is?) - just that I find no difference to Delhi. Both have their good areas, and not-so-good areas.