Commuters will have to wait a little longer for Central Railway’s app

Officials hopeful of launching app by end of the financial year, say it is undergoing rigorous tests before going public

Commuters will have to wait a little longer for Central Railway's app

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The eagerly awaited official app by the Central Railway — Meri Local — is yet to see the light of day. The app was initially supposed to be launched on August 15, this year, but is still stuck in tests and trials and officials are hoping to launch the app by next year.

Meri Local will have real-time position of moving trains across its 1,700 services. "The app needs to pass rigorous trials and will be beta-tested before it is made public. It involves installing GPS tags on trains to link them with the app," a CR official said.

"The app will be much stronger and authentic as it involves our database and trains. It is being tested for all parameters rigorously so that there is no error when it goes public. We will try to launch before the end of the financial year," a Central Railway chief public relations officer Shivaji Sutar said confirming the development.

Meanwhile, M-Indicator, a private app developed by one-time commuter and a software developer Sachin Teke, which is a very popular platform with Mumbaikars, has been a huge success after it included the live-tracking feature. It manages to track down real-time train timings by sharing location updates from commuters.

The Western Railway (WR) already has its app called DISHA - that has been integrated with a train management system as a result of which users can see the Expected Time of Arrival (ETA) of a local train at a particular station, as presently being displayed on indicators on the platforms.

The schedule of the expected trains on WR is shown in three time-slots - 30, 45 minutes and one hour in the DISHA app.

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