RailRadar GPS to track trains on Google map real time: Indian Railways

NEW DELHI: RailYatri.in, a technology start-up focused on train travellers, has launched the country’s first GPS train tracking platform, ‘RailRadar GPS’, to track and display the real-time movement of nation-wide trains on a Google map. RailYatri.in is the brainchild of alumni of IITs and IIM – Kapil Raizada, Sachin Saxena; and Manish Rathi with over 20 years of engineering experience.

With this release, the award-winning train travel app has taken the first concrete step towards the longstanding train tracking challenge using smart location technology implementation. RailYatri’s ‘RailRadar GPS’ will enable users to track running trains on a Google map along with its on-time/delay status.

The Railways has indicated that this is the first ever deployment of a true crowd-sourced location tracking. The previous attempts by the government to install GPS on trains as part of the SIMRAN project failed due to the high project costs. Real-time train tracking continued to be a challenge despite crores spent on the pilot project which was scrapped after being launched on about 40 premium trains.

Explaining in detail, railway authorities indicated that RailRadar GPS uses location generated by a passenger’s smartphone, the solution requires zero capital expenditure in terms of GPS hardware costs. ‘RailRadar GPS’ determines the train location by analyzing the pattern of locations transmitted by the traveler’s smartphone sitting on the train, similar to how Google Maps determines the traffic on the road when you are using any road transport like a car or a bus.

With hundreds of smartphones on each train nowadays, RailYatri’s RailRadar GPS has been designed to scale up to track every train in the country on a 24x7 basis, though for now the company has published around 100+ trains in the pilot phase.

Manish Rathi, CEO and co-founder, RailYatri.in commented, “Train location is one of the most sought after information by train travellers and the smartphone technology now allows us to answer that with accuracy and cost not possible a few years back. The crowd-sourced model uses mathematical modelling to confirm the train and its location. The technology reduces human errors, while available 24x7 under all weather conditions, irrespective of fog or visibility issues. All it requires is one smartphone RailYatri traveller on each train.”

RailRadar GPS shows trains running tracking data neatly displayed on a Google Map. The map also indicates the on-current time status of trains. Trains running on time have Green indicators, while those running late are marked red. On the top right, there's a display that shows the number of trains tracked at that point of time, and percentage of trains that are on schedule and delayed.Users can click the train name from the map or search by train number and RailRadar GPS shows the exact location of the train in terms of latitude and longitude.