Coming Soon – Indian Railways – Real Time Train Tracking On Google Maps

With the advancement in technology world wide, the Indian Railways also does not want to be lagged far behind. It is constantly looking out for ways of continuous improvement.

Indian Railways is all prepared and getting ready to launch the current train status on Google Maps. In the past also, the Indian Railways has implemented projects such as SIMRAN – Satellite Imaging For Rail Navigation for Real Time Passenger Information System. Project SIMRAN aimed at providing passenger with accurate and real time status of the train through SMS.

The current project which aims to provide real time train location on Google Maps is being jointly worked on by ISRO and CRIS – Center for Railway Information Systems, which is the technology wing of the Indian Railway System.

With this technology, the passengers would be in a position to get the exact location of the train with an accuracy of 10 meters and the latency in time would be around 2 minutes. It means that with this system, the passenger can know the status of the train at the location at which it was 2 minutes before the query was made and the system would respond with the exact location subject to plus or minus of 10 meters.

Currently pilot testing of the project is being carried out and majority of trains have been placed with the GPS equipment including trains such as Rajdhani and Shatabdi Express. The cost of the GPS equipment which is placed over these trains cost around Rs 70K to Rs 100 K and there is a plan to place these GPS device over 100 trains during the pilot study.

With the help of this technology, the collision that happens between trains could be prevented. Every train would know the relative position of other train with respect to itself and thus could prevent major accidents from taking place. The passengers could access the location of train in their mobile phones or on their laptops or any other device which can open Google Maps.

This project would take the help of INSAT-3C satellite which was developed by ISRO. Currently the accuracy level of 10 meters have been achieved but the team is working on bringing the accuracy level to a level of 3 meters which is exactly the distance between two gauge lines. With this accuracy, the happening of accidents can further be prevented.

With the successful implementation of such GPS monitoring system on Indian Railways, not only will it help passengers greatly in knowing the exact locations but will also help authorities in running the trains more effectively at higher speeds with an accidents or mishaps. We are pretty excited about this project from the Indian Railways and hope that you would also be in the same excitement after hearing this news.