TrainKothai
Free BD train tracking with real-time live train location
If you wanna check, visit TrainKothai.com for live train location & delay, now come to the question, Why I build it and how we get the data?
Last month I took the train from Dhaka to Chattogram. Trip was fine, but the whole way I had no idea where the train actually was or how late we were running.
Turns out the only option is to SMS, which costs around 4-5 taka each time. So every time I got curious, it cost me money. Ekbar na, barbar. By the end of the trip I'd spent more on SMS than I did on chanachur.
And the thing is, no website, no app, no map showing train live location in BD. Meanwhile in India you can open any of a dozen apps and watch your train move in real time.
So I looked at how those Indian apps do it, and most of them use the same trick: crowdsourcing. The train doesn't report its location, the passengers do.
I spent the last few months building that for Bangladesh. It's called TrainKothai (ট্রেন কোথায় — literally "where is the train"). Free, works in the browser, no account needed.
How it actually works:
First I had to collect all the boring stuff — every intercity train, its full schedule, every stoppage with arrival/departure times, and the GPS coordinates of the stations. Then I drew the actual rail lines on the map by hand, section by section, so a train moves along the track instead of floating in a straight line across the map.
In the app there's a toggle on the tracking page that says "I'm on this train." If you're on board, you turn it on.
Your phone then sends its location — but we don't just trust it. It gets checked against a few things first: Are you actually on a rail line, or are you sitting on a bus on the highway next to it? Does your speed look like a train? Are you moving in the right direction for that train? Are you near where that train is supposed to be right now?
If all of that checks out, your position becomes that train's live position, and everyone watching that train sees it — on the website, on the app, wherever.
If nobody's on board sharing, the site falls back to the official BR timetable and shows the scheduled position instead, clearly marked as such. It won't pretend to know something it doesn't.
So one person on the train helps a hundred people waiting at the station. That's the whole idea.
About your location,
It only turns on when you toggle it on. It's off by default.
It's anonymous. Nothing is tied to a name, number, or account, because there are no accounts.
What gets stored is the train's position, not yours. Nobody can see "this person is here."
You can turn it off any time, and closing the app stops it.
If you wanna try our app:
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.theflutterway.trainkothai
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/trainkothai-train-tracking-bd/id6786984387
Comment