Indian Railway Real Time Train Tracking On Google Maps : Coming Soon!

Do you remember the project #-Link-Snipped-# (Satellite Imaging For Rail Navigation for Real Time Passenger Information System) by Indian Railways & IIT Kanpur that we talked about few months ago? The project aimed at providing real time train status to the passengers via SMS. Now the Indian Railway is getting ready to launch the train status information on Google Maps. ISRO and Center for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) which is the technology wing of the Indian Railways have jointly worked on offering a GPS based solution for the train status on Google Maps. The technology can offer the exact train location with an accuracy of about 10 meters and latency of 2 minutes. The team will put GPS equipment on all major trains in the pilot phase including the Shatabdi & Rajdhani Express. The GPS device is expected to cost about Rs. 70k to Rs. 100k per train and the pilot project will cover over 100 trains.



This technology is expected to help in preventing train collisions. In future, every train will know each other's relative position and take preventive actions if needed. The passengers will be able to locate the train locations on Google Maps on their mobiles or on desktop computers. #-Link-Snipped-# INSAT-3C satellite is expected to help with the GPS communication among the trains. While the accuracy of up to 10 meters may look enough to us; the team is already working on bringing it down to 3 meters which is the distance between two gauge lines. It will help in preventing collisions if the train on parallel line is derailing.

Successful implementation of the GPS monitoring system will not only help passengers; but also help in running the trains at higher speeds. It's going to be interesting to follow up how the whole system turns out. We'll keep following the updates and make them available to you at earliest.

Via: Indian Railways to launch real-time train tracking via Google maps - The Economic Times