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Technology Science

Using GPS To Prevent Train Crashes In India 200

Posted by timothy from the appropriate-technology dept.
dave420 writes "The BBC has an article outlining plans in India to use GPS technology to alert train drivers of obstructions on the tracks, automatically stopping the train if the driver fails to take action. This sounds like a good use of cheaply-available technology to provide a safer train network."
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Using GPS To Prevent Train Crashes In India More

Using GPS To Prevent Train Crashes In India

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  • I hate to seem callous... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by l810c ( 551591 ) * on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:28AM (#6891613)
    In June, 51 people died when a train crashed into boulders in an area south of the financial capital, Bombay (Mumbai).

    Do the boulders have GPS too?

    At present, drivers sit on hard wooden seats in cabins where temperatures often soar to an unbearable 56C.

    The rest rooms provided for them often have no electricity and they have no recreational facilities.

    They will also get cushioned seats in the engine room as well as a walkie-talkie to keep in touch with the station officials.

    But it seems like they could have addressed some of these issues incrementally.

  • So... it'll know where other trains are (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    But it still won't know when a cow is on the tracks. If the driver is awake, this really shouldn't be necessary.

    • Re:So... it'll know where other trains are (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      mod this parent up!

      India's train engineers are notorious for braking fatally at the last minute because of a sacred cow on the tracks. While this may seem stupid to the rest of the word (and probably to the poor cow who merely wishes to die) the Indians are adamant that people should die to protect the cow. Knowing where the cows are seems very important if you value human life.
      • this problem was solved on some of the earliest trains they are called "cow catchers" Very low tech and cheap.

        • Re:So... it'll know where other trains are (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Ummm... I'm sorry I have to be the one to tell you this, but "cow catchers" don't gently nestle the cow in a little cradle like your mommy and daddy may have told you they did.

          They are big steel wedges which smash the cow out of the way of the train, pulverizing it to death.

          Somebody who considers cows sacred just might have a problem with this, and apply the breaks. That was the point the original poster was trying to make.

          Is this also a bad time to tell you about the Easter Bunny?

    • IMNATD [I am not a train driver]

      While I'm a big fan of UPS, I would tend to think that older observation techniques would probally be required. Like track number and mile (kilometer post) to report an obstruction and other issues. UPS is cool and i'm sure it would enhance this... it sound to me like they don't really have the people power in place. The artical reads as if UPS is going the work, and that is just silly. You still need something in the field in order to actually report this shit.

      This con

  • Cow GPS? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:29AM (#6891625)
    I could see where this could come in handy! The last thing ANY Indian would want to happen is to hit a cow wandering over the train tracks.

  • GPS (Score:5, Informative)

    by fldvm ( 466714 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:30AM (#6891630) Homepage
    The reason that GPS is not used in the US for trains more is because many times tracks run right next to each other and sometimes trains run on the right and other times on the left. GPS is not accurate enough to tell what track the train is on.

    • Re:GPS (Score:3, Insightful)

      by insecuritiez ( 606865 )
      That could be solved by a clever engineer. How about the rout is pre-programmed so it knows what tracks it is on, then instead of measuring the horizontal (which track it is on), that is known and only the vertical (along the track) is needed from GPS. Or, how about DGPS [uscg.gov], to enhance the accuracy. Now how GPS is going to tell them when a cow is crossing is another story. Last I checked cows were not born with transmitters.

    • Re:GPS (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 07, 2003 @02:17AM (#6891758)
      Well, the system is different in India, we have a two track system, an up-line and a down-line, and trains never travel parallel to each other in the same direction on the same stretch of track at the same time. So GPS makes sense. What i dont understand is how the Indian railways is going to use this stuff, India is notious for the "let-it-go" attitude to serious issues, ministers and staff are callous, and Indian railway staions are a sight to behold, it's almost a mini-fair, sadhus, fakirs, beggars, thieves, cheats touts, vendors hawking everthing from desi-viagra to eucalyptus oil, ticketless travellers riding on the roof, dirt, faeces on the tracks, cows, crows, huge bandicoot rats etc,

      If you ever get caught in a train problem someplace in India, do not expect the railways to help you or give you a refund, get going from wherever you can, that ways you atleast save some time. Carry a basic first aid kit, avoid eatables offered by co-passengers (might be drugged), and drink bottled water, travel by AC if you can...

      • Re:GPS (Score:3, Informative)

        by anonymous cupboard ( 446159 )
        Um, there is actually a lot of single-track railroad in India with very occassional passing points.

        When the train is going the a/c isn't needed because the air blowing through the open doors and windows cools things down. OTOH, you can spend a lot of time waiting at the crossing points. Then it gets really hot.

    • sometimes trains run on the right and other times on the left.

      Sounds like a bit of a recipe for disaster to me. Do you have a lot of train crashes in the US?

      Here in Australia, we have two parallel tracks throughout metropolitan Sydney (and, I presume, the same in other cities that have commuter trains). On the inter-city routes, most are served by a single track, but they use a physical token passing system to control who is allowed to be on any particular section of track at any given point in time. A

      • On the inter-city routes, most are served by a single track, but they use a physical token passing system to control who is allowed to be on any particular section of track at any given point in time.

        Cool. I saw a program on Discovery on Indian Rail, and they use physical tokens too, on some of the older lines and slower trains. I suspect though that physical tokens would be a problem for long-distance passenger trains, which run distances like 2000km in under 28 hours or so -- that doesn't sound very fast,


    • So, a train-locating system can combine both GPS
      (for near-enough position) and an APRS-like sys-
      tem (capable of transmitting locally sensed data
      - such as track ID, from a reliable transponder)

      I suppose, of course, that, in India, we -might-
      be able to hire enough poor people to live along
      side of the tracks (eg, every 50 feet), and keep
      watch for animals; on seeing one they transmit a
      warning signal, heard/decoded by the engineer or
      a system s/he can be slowed by.
    • This isn't hard to deal with at all. Using a system like CTC (Centralized Traffic Control, here in Canada) involves placing a low voltage across the tracks. The metal wheels and axle of the trains create a shunt, and you can detect where the train is on the track. When you combine that info with the GPS info, you can tell very precisely where a train is, and what track it is on.

      There are other methods as well, including hotbox detectors (systems that measure the temperature of the axle bearings as the t

  • GPS taking our jobs (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Indian Programmers Assosication (IPA) is getting worried that some of it's jobs might go overseas to countries that manage GPS satellites.

  • Sooo.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:31AM (#6891633)
    What happens when the USA turns off or munges GPS information again? Is Europe still considering if they should make a secondary GPS system?
    • Yes, actually it was mentioned on slashdot a couple of months ago:
      http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/2 6/2335202&tid=126
      It will be nice to have an alternative, considering the sometimes clunky nature of gps and the fact that the u.s. government controls it and can switch on selective availabilty any time it wants to.
    • Same thing that happens to a zillion commercial boats.

      And give the designers some credit for having the system realize when GPS is degraded (it's easy to tell) and have it not try and be so "smart" when it is degraded.

      • Re:Sooo.... (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Indeed. Few people know it but if "something" were to happen in the US such that GPS emphemeris could not be updated on its normal schedule (weekly), within a month or two GPS would become next to useless. The safety margin on GPS is actually quite thin. GPS could not be part of the picture in those "last man on earth" movies.

      • Re:Sooo.... (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Boats have land-based maritime radio signals telling them exactly where they are (if they are within range) when the GPS signal is scrambled.

        When they are out at sea, the ballpark figure given by the scrambled signal is more than good enough to be useful, so boats never really needed a non-degraded GPS. Radio navigation towers are even found on the Great Lakes.

    • Re:Sooo.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by westyvw ( 653833 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @02:33AM (#6891787)
      Wont matter. Most professional GPS systems use a ground radio beacon. Given that you have a known point, the beacon sends out the corrected data back to you.

    • Re:Sooo.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by absolut_kurant ( 152888 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @03:58AM (#6891940)
      Yes Europe is :) The system is called Galileo [esa.int] and you can find more information at the link. Slashdot also had a story [slashdot.org].

      The first satellites are supposed to be launched in 2004.

  • The day is coming... (Score:3, Funny)

    by krymsin01 ( 700838 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:32AM (#6891635) Homepage Journal
    when the human is their to make sure the computer is being alert.
    • > The day is coming when the human is there to make sure the computer is being alert.

      Just like in Soviet Russia.
    • The day is coming... when the human is their to make sure the computer is being alert.

      That day is already here. What do you think NOC monkeys do all night? They sit around all night just incase a computer goes down.

      Yes, even in NOCs that run linux.
    • when the human is their to make sure the computer is being alert

      And the factory of the future will have 2 employees. A man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog and the dog will be there to keep the man from touching the machines.

      Or so they tell me anyway.

  • the reason for most train crashes (Score:3, Insightful)

    by civilengineer ( 669209 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:37AM (#6891650) Homepage Journal
    is bad tracks and bridges, rather than stationary objects on track. The only solution for that is to get rid of the British laid century old tracks and lay new ones.
    • The same reason the UK seems to be having many crashes and derailments. Who could have thought of such a thing.
    • Sadly, just rebuilding the oldest parts of the railway wouldn't help with things like the 760km Konkan Railway down the west coast from Mumbai to Mangalore. The problem with the Konkan isn't that it's old, it's very new. Rather, the key issue is corruption.

      If you don't check the contractors building the bridges, tunnels, cuttings, embankments, they WILL use 9 parts of sand to one of cement and bill as if they'd used 3:1. And they DID come up with a route running not inland as previously specified in the

  • Smart Cars? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by neiffer ( 698776 ) *
    I wonder if this technology will evolve into technology to support automobile travel. There have been many attempts to develop technologies to allow for automated auto travel from laying copper wire for navigation systems to using object sensors in bumpers. Maybe GPS is the way to go! Of course, the BMW's of the world will get it first!

    • Re:Smart Cars? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by thynk ( 653762 )
      I remember not long ago thinking how simple the system would have to be to have a smart car take over in situations where you'd normally use cruise control. Did a bit of poking around and found that a group in Germany built an automated car that was able to pass the German driving exam.

      Pretty sweet stuff - will make my 13 hour drives to pick my kids up several times a year a lot easier to deal with.
    • Yes of course it has to be made more accurate, and that's just what this professor [ucr.edu] at UCR's [ucr.edu], Department of Electrical Engineering [ucr.edu] is working on. To quote what he says about it:

      Global Positioning Systems: Accurate vehicle control requires reliable, accurate, high rate vehicle state information. We have developed and demonstrated a differential GPS/INS system to provide full six degree of freedom vehicle state information. Using GPS carrier phase and/or magnetometer measurements, we currently attain 2.5 cm

  • better than nothing, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kaan ( 88626 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:38AM (#6891658)
    Having heard countless stories from most of my Indian pals over the years, I'm really curious how much of a difference this GPS plan will make. Sure, it's might be better than the way things are right now, but it seems that the transportation problems are endemic to society and thus not fixable (or even help-able) with something like GPS devices. And this isn't limited to just trains; there are apparently bus accidents all the time, too.

    Having not been to India myself, I have to go with my second-hand knowledge and stories I hear, but it pretty much sounds like the Indian economy would never support the kinds of changes required to make mass transit actually safe. I'm interested to hear others' thoughts on this.
  • The article is a bit lean on how GPS is used and frankly I don't see how GPS can prevent collisions with a stationary object on the rails. Of course, collisions between trains can be avoided if someone monitors the positions of trains.
    • If you haven't noticed the BBC is rather lean on all kinds of facts lately. They seem to get in the opinions which the reporter would rather voice. The BBC is gone down the drain hole.
    • You're right, the article is pretty thin on the details. Perhaps the gps will allow authorities to know the precise position of each train, so that any problems on the track can be relayed quickly to the necessary trains. The other possibility is that the tracks could somehow be wired to detect and report singificant movement of the rails such as would occur from falling boulders. Given the immense amount of track in question, however, this seems implausible. So basically, I would bet that someone who

  • I just LOVE this reporting: (Score:5, Funny)

    by TexVex ( 669445 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:41AM (#6891669)
    When there is an accident, that often translates into large numbers of casualties.
    And in other news, failure to regularly exchange carbon dioxide with oxygen frequently results in death to animals and people!
  • But now, they can look forward to yoga classes, counselling for work as well as personal problems and air-conditioned rest rooms on long distance trips. While the GPS system drives the train?

  • War Railing? (Score:5, Funny)

    by metrazol ( 142037 ) <jwm33@corne l l . e du> on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:47AM (#6891683)
    So the trains have a GPS doohicky in 'em, alright. And ya say that there doohicky can stop the train if the driver doesn't? Okeydokey.

    And so you're sayin' I could sit next to the tracks and stop trains with the WiFi card in my Zaurus? Neat-o.

    Saves having to follow the schedule!

  • Point car (Score:5, Interesting)

    by steveha ( 103154 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:49AM (#6891692) Homepage
    I have an idea for improving train safety.

    The biggest problem for train safety is that a train is hard to stop. It has so much mass that you can't just suddenly decide to stop it. In a perfect world, you would have some warning before you needed to stop it.

    So make a much smaller vehicle that can stop quickly, and have that run out ahead of the train! Call it the "point car". Sensors on the point car would watch for an obstruction on the tracks (such as a stalled truck) and would halt the point car quickly; the train would stop more slowly, but it would have enough warning that it could stop before it reached the point car, let alone the obstruction. Also, you could mount a video camera on the front of the point car, and the engineer driving the train could watch a live video feed. A wireless radio link is probably the best way for the point car and the train to communicate.

    I'm sure the biggest problem with my idea is that it would cost too much. The point car would need fuel of some sort, and would itself be an expensive piece of equipment, and you would need one for each train. It would be cool if the point car could be driven by electric motors that somehow parasite power off the train, but I don't think any sort of power extension cord would be very practical.

    And of course, if India is only now spending the money to put cushions in for engineers to sit on, they won't be the first ones to try point cars.

    I don't know much about train crashes -- what fraction of train crashes are preventable with just GPS, and what fraction are not? If the most common problem is a train hitting another train, then GPS on both trains would help a lot. But GPS won't do much good if a truck stalls across the tracks.

    steveha

    • Re:Point car (Score:5, Interesting)

      by technix4beos ( 471838 ) <cshaiku@gmail.com> on Sunday September 07, 2003 @02:03AM (#6891721) Homepage Journal
      How about using unmanned fuel cell airplanes? It could follow the tracks, ahead of the train, reporting back what it sees, AND be able to stop in time.

      I'm positive it could be engineered to follow the tracks, hovering a few feet above the ground. When it spots something obstructing the tracks, it could report it automatically to central control, and the train, which would then have time to slow down.

      Read the previous slashdot entry:
      http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid =03/06/2 4/1954211&mode=nested&tid=126

      According to the links, it's capable of sustained flight for six months. Surely given that India has over 90% of it's rail lines outside, and it gets quite a lot of sun exposure, this would be a good choice of "point vehicle".

      Just a thought.

      • Why not just put that fuel cell into the point car described by the grandparent post. Seems like the point railcar would be far simpler to engineer than an automated airplane. It won't need any fancy (read: error prone) image recognition to detect obstructions. Just run into the obstruction. I know, not very elegant, but the idea is that colliding with the point car is a lot less disastrous than colliding with the train.
      • How about using unmanned fuel cell airplanes? It could follow the tracks, ahead of the train, reporting back what it sees, AND be able to stop in time.

        I was thinking something similar to point cars, though I used the term pilot my self, but hey same concept.

        Fuel Cell airplanes are interesting... also ultra light solar craft would be an option as well i'd imagine. Though, after further thought I'm thinking that anything too mechanical would be too costly to implement on such a wide scale.

        Idealy some f

      • This is a better idea, or would be, ie
        if the camera looked behind as well as
        in front.

        But... still not fool-proof in places,
        where neither point vehicle nor train-
        driver could see cow walking towards
        the tracks.
    • That is a good idea.
      But why use an easily blocked radio signal between the two cars when they are sharing a conductive metal track....

      In all honesty your idea doesn't sound that expensive.

      I do see one problem though. The point car would have to travel so far ahead of the train, easily a mile, that at intersections in the road car traffic would be tempted to dart between the point car and the locomotive.

      We could resolve that problem with laser targeting and autonomous semi-automatic weapons.
      • We could resolve that problem with laser targeting and autonomous semi-automatic weapons.

        Funny, we could use that to resolve MOST problems. Everything from a cheating girlfriend to drug lords to J walkers.

    • Nice idea, but what happens if a cow, etc.
      happens to get onto the track -between-
      the Point Car & the high-inertia train?

      ie, -after- the (presumably forward-looking)
      Point Car passes the point of entry.

      Assume an obstacle prevents driver of train
      from seeing the cow walking towards tracks.
    • why not just use smaller cars? then they would be easier to stop in time.

      a good solution would be to replace each train with a passenger-capacity-equivalent amount of autonomous, computer-controlled bus-sized cars. they would be easier to stop, accidents would involve much less mass/energy/people making them less fatal, and they could leave at more regular intervals. it would be a packet-based system, sorta like the internet...
      • As mentioned in another post, this does nothing for the non-paying passengers that end up sitting on the roof, and who constitute most of the injuries and deaths in crashes as they go flying, landing everywhere -- including under the train.
    • Okay, India has a GNP/capita of around $400 (compared to USA's $23000). India has its share of dollar-millionaires, but it also has over a billion poor people who contribute virtually nothing to the economy.

      I'm thinking it would be more cost-effective and reliable for India to employ two people for every kilometer of track for every hour of the day, every day of the year. If someone notices a problem with the track, they should run to the next guy down the track with the news, who runs to the next guy,

  • Yep... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SharpFang ( 651121 )
    Going to attach a GPS to each tree growing by the track, in case wind breaks it and it falls on the track obstructing it?

  • some facts about indian railways (Score:5, Informative)

    by dracken ( 453199 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @02:05AM (#6891726) Homepage
    I thought I could pitch in with a few handy facts. Indian railways is one of the largest railways in the world. The Centre for Railway Information Systems has implemented the online reservation system through which half a million people book tickets everyday - the reservation system is one of the largest distributed databases in world and runs openVMS. Consider the scale of operations-

    Indian Railways has over 62,000 route kms of track.

    Indian Railways employs about 1.6 million people.

    Carries over 11 million passengers & one million tonnes of freight everyday. (about 4.83 billion passengers and 492 million tons of freight per year)

    It runs about 13,000 trains daily and has 6,984 railway stations.

    The longest journey on Indian Railways is from Jammu Tawi to Kanyakumari, a distance of about 3,751 kms covered by Himsagar Express in about 66 hours.

    • Re:some facts about indian railways (Score:5, Informative)

      by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @02:53AM (#6891822) Homepage Journal
      I thought I'd add some things:

      * Compared to the USA, in India trains are by far the most common means of transport between cities because road travel is too slow and air travel is too costly for most.
      Trains are used even within cities.
      * Trains here have a reputation for always arriving late. Most of the coaches are used long after they should be discarded, leading to increasd accident frequency.
      * Recently the Indian railways has made a lot of efforts to modernize itself, like online reservation, as the parent poster noted.

  • And they'll be using GPS how? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fname ( 199759 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @02:09AM (#6891736) Journal
    Well, that sums up my thoughts after reading this article. Huh? GPS is really useful for a lot of things, and railroads use it to track there cars in the rail yard (with the help of radios which broadcast their location) and on the rails. And they can distinguish whether a car is on one track or the other if they have differential GPS set up.

    As for collisions, it could help avoid crashes between 2 cars or between 1 car and a known obstruction, if they are using differential GPS to identify the track. Otherwise. I suppose if there's only one track, the railroads could use this info to prevent trains from colliding. Or if a bridge is out, the railroad could use software that gets the GPS info to alert the driver.

    However, the article doesn't go into any details at all; maybe they'll just use it to identify conductors of recent accidents, which they could probably do just as well w/o GPS since the dispatchers know where the trains are anyways. Maybe this is just the easiest thing to implement with the GPS technology, and once it's in place, they'll expand. I wish the article had more info though, so I could spare everyone from my idle speculation.
    • It's all about stopping theft. You didn't really believe all that safety nonsense, did you? That's just to placate the plebes. Turns out, train theft is rampant in India, and GPS is the only practical way to track the locomotives to the chop shops.

  • Is Hi-Tech the Only Way For India to Survive? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by reporter ( 666905 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @02:11AM (#6891742) Homepage
    Last month, Slashdot initiated a discussion topic about introducing a low-bandwidth Internet connection into impoverished villages in India [slashdot.org]. Now, this month, Slashdot initiates a discussion topic about using a global positioning system (GPS) to prevent Indian trains from crashing. Things appear as though Indian society cannot function properly without high technology.

    Please read "Trains in Japan [discover-japan.info]". Trains in Japan have been extremely reliable and clean since the 1950s -- almost half a century. In 1960, there was no GPS, no Internet, etc. Yet, the train system in Japan worked fine.

    What in Indian culture prevents Indian society from developing into a modern society? Why does Indian society need all this high-tech intervention in order to make it just barely livable, yet Japan has been an adequately livable society since the late 1960s?

    • Suicide by Train (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by Detritus ( 11846 )
      I read an article that said Japan has a major problem with "suicide by train". Despondent people stand on the tracks in front of an oncoming high-speed train.

    • wow, this is going to be hard...

      what is it that you define as a modern society, and why is it that you think india doesnt have one? Perhaps it was the word 'impoverished' that confused you. You seem to equate large amounts of wealth with 'success'.

      The history of India-Pakistan in just the past 75 years should answer your question if you want to look into that aspect.

      I find it disturbing that you arent aware of that history, although I can see why it wouldnt be common knowledge these days

      • what is it that you define as a modern society, and why is it that you think india doesnt have one?

        Well, one large clue is the caste system [tripod.com].

        • It was about 12 months ago that I noticed that
          an online computer shop (in India) had a match-
          making site linked from the shop's website.

          The matchmaking site's membership form asked for
          one's caste, & I suppose it was a required
          data field.

        • You provided a nice link, but I still fail to see how that isnt a modern society. India at least has the decency to call it what it is, whereas the rest of the 'modern world' still uses fudiciary and educational background to discriminate on a much larger scale.

          Reading the link you posted describing how people in cities dont care that much of the caste system, whereas in rural communities they often keep seperate. Explain how that is different than much of the US. You make it sound like the US(Im assuming

    • Re:Is Hi-Tech the Only Way For India to Survive? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What in Indian culture prevents Indian society from developing into a modern society?

      In Hindi, the word for tommorow is the same as yesterday ;-)

    • Re:Is Hi-Tech the Only Way For India to Survive? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 07, 2003 @03:42AM (#6891913)
      Please read "Trains in Japan". Trains in Japan have been extremely reliable and clean since the 1950s -- almost half a century. In 1960, there was no GPS, no Internet, etc. Yet, the train system in Japan worked fine.

      Japan is a smaller country.
      Japan didn't have rail put in by the British
      Japan has a much higher literacy rate
      Japan's population have one common language. India's national language is English but that was only because it was the only common one educated Indians had.
      Japan was high tech in the 1950. India simply was not.
      Japan had western help to rebuild after the war

      India was abondoned by the British some time ago, and part of Gandhi's dream was to bring literacy into India. He too felt there was no excuse for them living in 3rd world conditions. It's been a very slow going task.

    • Japan is tiny compared to India. That alone has a LOT to do with it. Japan, also, has a new train network. India's is very, very old. I mean seriously old.

      Oh, and I'd like to see America function without high technology. Seriously, that would be hilarious. If all the intercity flights were grounded, and cars were taken off the road, the average US joe would use Amtrack to get around, and you'd soon understand the predicament India is in.

      It's easy to make fun of the little guy.

    • Japan also uses a lot of very effective practices that are low tech. In fact, NYC studied them when trying to solve a problem with their subways. The subway trains have doors on both sides of car, but the conductor is only supposed to open the doors on the side facing the platform when pulling into a station. There used to be something like 15 injuries and/or deaths each year caused by conductors opening the wrong set of doors, causing passengers that weren't paying attention to step off the train onto t
  • there has been 167 [clari.net] in this year alone in india. 229 people were killed and 394 injured. this is good news for people in india. we can only hope that it does not become another vapurware. india in the past has given up on good projects like this one.

  • Shotgun article (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The article shotguns a lot of improvements in one page or so. There are several problems that need to be solved and one (or a few) of them can be solved using the GPS or similar system. If each train has a one GPS receiver and broadcasts its position, the driver can at least be cognizant there is another train nearby and have enhanced situational awareness. If there is only a single track, then he knows the train is likely on the same track as his. The most likely use is to prevent collisions - which h

  • Train Crossings (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Goldfinger7400 ( 630228 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @02:37AM (#6891793)
    Wait, so does this mean they'll actually be able to shut the gate at a train crossing when a train is actually approaching? I recall waiting close to an hour (it's worse sometimes) for the train to actually pass, due to the fact that the gates are arbitrarily scheduled, and the train drivers have no sense of time.

    Amidst the bombard of vendors during the wait, at least I know now where to obtain a false passport.

  • While this does seem like a very practical, important, and just plain cool use of GPS, I do see the one big, ominous problem of the US jamming/degrading the GPS system in the event of another war. As well they should, but this could be leathal for this technology.

    From gge.unb.ca [gge.unb.ca]:

    The GPS Standard Positioning Service (SPS) uses the C/A-code component of the GPS L1 signal which is transmitted on 1575.42 MHz. The C/A-code, which stands for coarse/acquisition-code, is a pseudorandom noise code which the GPS receiver uses to determine the distance to a satellite. The distance is determined by aligning the received code with a replica of the code generated in the receiver. By measuring at least four such distances to different satellites simultaneously and knowing where the satellites are from the navigation messages they transmit, the receiver can figure out where it is. The C/A-code is a relatively short code which repeats every millisecond and a GPS receiver can easily lock onto or acquire it.

    The military's GPS capability is known as the Precise Positioning Service (PPS). It relies on a much longer code called the P-code (for precise or precision) which is transmitted on both the L1 frequency and the L2 frequency at 1227.60 MHz. The P-code is encrypted (and it's then called the Y-code) so that it cannot be accessed by unauthorized users. Encryption also prevents a military GPS receiver from being fooled or spoofed by a fake GPS signal transmitted by an enemy. The encryption process is known as Anti-Spoofing. Military GPS receivers have decryption capabilities which permit them to recover the P-code.

    Each satellite's unique P-code segment is one week long. In order to determine the distance to a satellite using the P-code, the receiver must align a replica of the code it generates with the arriving code.

    Prior to 2 May 2000, the accuracy afforded users of the GPS Standard Positioning Service (SPS) was purposefully degraded through a policy and technique known as Selective Availability (SA). The use of SA gave military users of GPS a position accuracy advantage - one it did not wish to share with potential adversaries. SA was effected by manipulating or dithering the output of each GPS satellite's active atomic clock. This clock controls the generation of all of the satellite's signals and hence the measurements made by a GPS receiver. SA was imposed at a level which would yield a stated SPS horizontal (latitude and longitude) accuracy of 100 metres or better 95 percent of the time for any point in the world during a measurement interval of one day. On 2 May 2000, by presidential decree, the level of SA was set to zero. SPS users immediately saw a quantum jump in positioning accuracy with factors of 5 to 10 improvements. Even a simple handheld receiver can now often yield horizontal position accuracies of 5 metres.

    Now remember, we've more or less been fighting 3rd world countries as far as their military capabilities go, so their use of GPS against us was highly unlikely. But say we go to war with a real military anytime soon. A country like China could sustain a global conflict for a while, and has the technology to make effective use of GPS against us. It wouldn't suprise me then if the (useful) SPS signal soon after the start of a conflict of that scope became non-exist.

    So, back to the point of this, unless the US gives the Indian government military grade GPS gear, there could be a disaster waiting to happen. Granted, the chances are low, but still something to think about. But even given this, I personally think this should be a good model for other advanced railway systems to look at.
  • I don't know if any has seen some of those indian trains on the news; some of them are literally covered with people, people hanging off the sides and sitting on the roof. I don't wanna imagine an indian train accident. I hope this technology will work.
    • The above post raises a good point. The problem I've experiences with Indian trains is the tendency of Indians to sing, dance, flirt, and generally arrange large musical dance numbers, all carried out on the rooftops of moving trains. The stations aren't much better, teary-eyed men are constantly watching their true loves head back to the village to get an arranged marriage to some brute.
    • What you are describing is typically a local train in a major city, running no more than 50 to 80 kms total with stops every 2 to 5 kms.

      The article refers to the long distance, inter city trains which cover anywhere from 200- to 3000+ kms in one run. It would be far more uncommon to see people hanging out of these trains as one has to have a reservation (read seat) to get on board. Of course there are other ways to get on a train, but my point stands.

  • GPS jammers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vinsci ( 537958 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @03:35AM (#6891900) Journal
    Relying on GPS only has always been a bad idea. There are plenty of reasons for this, one being GPS jammers [phrack.com].

    A search for "GPS jammer" [google.com] can be interesting for the bored.

  • Ever seen a trainwreck before? (Score:5, Funny)

    by imag0 ( 605684 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @03:40AM (#6891909) Homepage
    Talking about trains always reminds me of my uncle Earl. Back in the day Earl took his test to become a train conductor since he loved trains so much.

    It got to the oral part of the test and the proctor asked Earl "You have a northbound train running at 38 MPH and a southbound train on the same track running at 42 MPH. The trains are 6 miles from each other. Who do you call first to report this to?

    Earl perked right up "I'll call my nephew imag0, of course!"

    The proctor was puzzled and asked "Why would would call your nephew?"

    "'Cause he's never seen a trainwreck before!"
  • I can see how train crashes could be a big problem since it is difficult to swerve out of the way of another train when you have to sit on wooden chairs.

  • Indian Train Driver? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm an Indian train driver, you insensitive clod!
  • The usual semi-informed opinions about why it won't work, the spotting of 'obvious' flaws for the benefit of the designers (because they're clearly going to be unable to spot the obvious, are they?). References to Web sites detailing someone who's already done the same thing (but who also seems not to have managed to change the world with their invention or fired the public's imagination). Add a sprinkle of smart-ass comments modded as funny when they're not really. Someone will try and make reference to on

  • Much cheaper solution. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hire Muslims who are not adverse to runing over the damm cow on the tracks.
  • "Using GPS To Randomly Halt Trains In India"
  • This is totally stupid.

    France blew millions trying to develop Astree, a satellite-based train dispatching system. They failed.

    Using GPS to monitor trains is ridiculous. It doesn't have the precision to determine on WHICH TRACK THE TRAIN IS; and if it had the precision to do so, you would need an extremely precise and onerous database to precisely locate every meter of every track.

    The track itself is a fixed location, and over the last 120 years, technology has been developped to precisely locate trains o

  • technology in train transportation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Servo ( 9177 ) <dstringf.tutanota@com> on Sunday September 07, 2003 @11:52AM (#6893713) Journal
    A friend of mine's father works for the railroad here in the US. High level position that oversee's all of the traffic throughout the east.

    As I understand it, they use all sorts of radio networks and GPS systems to track where all the trains and cars are. They have advanced enough tracking that they know what locamotives are where, how many cars are hooked up to it, which track its on, and where its going.

    While technology isn't going to stop someone from hitting a boulder, it can get information around and see who is near the area and avoid as much damage as possible. It is foolish to think we can protect ourselves from everything, but a step in the right direction is progress none the less.

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