AboutChris Holliday Expertise Questions related to contemporary passenger rail vehicles and their technology, including subway, light rail, commuter and intercity rolling stock. Includes all vehicle systems and features along with integration of the vehicles into the general railroad system.
Experience I have over 22 years of experience in the passenger rail vehicle business as both an engineering manager at a car builder and as a provider of engineering services to commuter railroads and transit agencies in the US. I have worked to apply the latest technologies to passanger rail equipment. I have worked with leaders in our industry to develop and establish Standards and Recommended practices.
Expert: Chris Holliday Date: 12/13/2007 Subject: ITS and Railroad Crossing
Question What are the ITS technologies to inform passengers about train approaching, how long its takes or how long will it remain at crossing etc so that they could re-route their way.
Answer Hello:
I believe you are asking if ITS technologies are being applied to railroad grade crossings in a way that would allow information about grade crossing activity to be made available to web based applications or mobile systems like Smartphones or GPS units.
While all of the technological elements which you would need to make such a system work are available today, I am not aware that anyone has yet combined them in a way which would provide this sort of information to users. It seems to me that you could use information from the railroad signaling and grade-crossing warning system fed to traffic data services to tell traffic-data equipped mapping systems in people's cars to display a blocked grade-crossing in order to proactively avoid getting stuck waiting for a train.
Bear in mind that my response is not based on extensive research, only what I am aware of from may day to day activities in the business. Since I do not own or use a traffic-data equipped GPS, I am not certain that someone does not already have this feature already on the market. There might be someone out there working to add this capability to consumer based traffic enabled navigation systems right now. Or maybe such capability is waiting for someone to invent it!
