 "CRIS, RailYatri develop live train tracker")
Yesterday, the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) showcased the RailRadar, a live tracker that provides the location of a train on a map of India. Using the interactive map, one can visualise the network of running trains across the country in real time. RailRadar has been jointly developed by the CRIS and RailYatri. It is already live, and can be accessed at its official website.
“With the launch of RailRadar, we are offering information in an entirely new way about train movement, which is, perhaps, the first for any major railway system in the world,” said Sunil Bajpai, General Manager, CRIS.
Track your train
“Over the last decade, train network and traffic in India have grown tremendously. We are also very sure that this trend will continue over the next few decades. As railway travelers too, today we also want to know more – beyond just ‘an’ ETA of ‘a’ train at ‘a’ station. As the volume and complexity of information increases – we believe that new methods of information dissemination (associated with Trains and its running information) will be required sooner than later. RailYatri.in’s RailRadar is one such attempt on that line. We believe that value of information/directions can greatly be enhanced when presented graphically rather than just plain text,” Bajpai added.
The CRIS adds that the RailRadar has a built-in functionality with a user friendly interface. Passengers can use the zoom tools with the map to get details about a train or motion of a railway station. In addition, users can search for a particular station or train to get details of trains close to the station or the running status of a train, location, its route, and stoppages.
Passengers can also know the status of their train, i.e., the ‘on time’ and delay status on the map by viewing the assigned legend. In case of a mishap or unplanned activity, RailRadar would be able to provide users with an overview of situation and train status across the country.
On a bar on the left-hand side of the map, there are options such as Search, wherein users can enter their train number, the name of the station and initiate the search. On clicking any of the results thus displayed, users are directed to the particular location on the map to their right on the screen.
At the moment, RailRadar updates or refreshes itself every five minutes. While the updates about the individual trains may vary based on the area where it is currently running. In any scenario, the location and status of the trains displayed on RailRadar will always be delayed by five minutes or more.
The information and intelligence behind RailRadar is extracted and harnessed from volumes of data from the official Indian Railway’s train running information data.
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