Ukrainian tech entrepreneur, backend and AI engineer Igor Karas announced the relaunch of his technology service Rail-X, which helps drivers receive information about the status of railroad crossings in real time and make route decisions.
Ukrainian tech entrepreneur, backend and AI engineer Igor Karas announced the relaunch of his technology service Rail-X, which helps drivers receive information about the status of railroad crossings in real time and make route decisions.
The project was created by Karas in 2018 and worked in several cities in Ukraine, where it gathered tens of thousands of users who used the service to avoid traffic jams near railway crossings.
After a pause caused by the full-scale war in Ukraine, the developer decided to restart the project in a new format — a community-driven platform, where messages from the drivers themselves become the key source of data.
Rail-X emerged as a response to a common urban mobility problem: drivers often find themselves stuck in traffic jams at railroad crossings without information about how long the barrier will be closed.
Many cities lack tools for timely information about the status of crossings, so drivers are forced to make decisions about waiting or detouring without access to up-to-date data.
It was this problem that Karas tried to solve by creating a digital service that allows you to receive information about the status of transfers in real time.
The initial version of Rail-X combined several technological components, including IP cameras, computer vision algorithms, and backend infrastructure for processing video data.
Video stream analysis algorithms allowed us to automatically determine the moments when the barrier opened or closed, after which the system transmitted the status of the move to the Telegram bot.
Users could subscribe to the channel and receive notifications about changes in the status of the move in almost real time.
By 2021, Rail-X was working with railroad crossings in seven cities in Ukraine and had attracted approximately 30,000 users who regularly used the service.
The project has also attracted the attention of the technology community and international organizations.
In particular, he received support under the CRDF Global grant program, an international organization that funds innovative technological and scientific initiatives.
In the new version of Rail-X, a significant part of the data is generated directly by the service users.
If a driver sees that a crossing is closed, he can report it via the Telegram bot.
Thereafter:
The service also implements gamification elements that encourage users to regularly report the status of their moves.
According to Karas, the current development strategy involves the rapid connection of new crossings in community mode.
When an active community of approximately 200–1000 users forms in the local channel, the team considers returning to the camera monitoring model.
In this case, a partnership with local businesses or organizations is envisaged to install cameras and develop monitoring infrastructure.
Karas is also considering using a similar model for other types of urban infrastructure.
For example, a similar approach can be used to monitor drawbridges or other transportation facilities where traffic is periodically restricted.
The idea for such an application arose after Karas' experience living in the USA, in particular in Miami, where drivers regularly face delays due to the lifting of drawbridges.
Thus, Rail-X can be considered not only as a local service for monitoring railway crossings, but also as a potential platform for creating a distributed information system about the state of urban transport infrastructure.
