Metra GPS tracking

Hello,

There is talk about how the CTA GPS tracking is way ahead of Metra, but that Metra will have it available by the end of this year.

Does anyone know more about this? Will it be an app available on your phone? And will it be so accurate that you can sit in the station on a cold rainy day, and tell when your train is approaching so that you can get to the platform in plenty of time before the gates start coming down?

Those automated station announcements are often worthless. They announce the next inbound train is in 10 minutes, which refers to the next train, while the current inbound is 2 minutes away. Worse, is when they say the next train is an express and to stay behind the yellow line, at the exact same time that the train is barreling through the station.

Does anyone know of any freight GPS tracking sites?

There are several good airplane tracking sites, but for security reasons, the actual plane position is 10 minutes behind.

Thanks for any insights into this.

Metra has been using GPS tracking technology in house for years, but I have not heard of any plans from Metra to have a public tracking system like CTA train tracker. Hopefully it is something Metra will develop in the future.

As for freight, there are tracing systems available from some railroads. They are set up to track shipments, similar to that of UPS/FedEx.