HELENA — In Helena, a lot of people’s days can get derailed by getting stuck at one of the train crossings.
“You know, just to get across town sometimes, it can be a real pain,” said resident Samuel McCumbers.
Evan Charney reports - watch the video:
“Absolutely, I think it does take a long time to get people through,” said another resident, Chris Starr.
While some people that MTN spoke with say it’s needed to bolster Helena’s economy, it seems to be a shared problem that many community members come face-to-face with. One resident took it upon herself to make it easier for people to know if they should take another route.
“I kept experiencing the problem firsthand,” said Keara Fairclough, the creator of the Helena train tracker. “I wanted to try to find a better way to plan around that.”
The new tracker is a free website that tells people if one of the 10 crossings around town is blocked by a train, or if it's clear to pass through.
To get it, you just go to the website, and you can even add it to your phone's homescreen as an app. The app works on both Android and iOS platforms. To get it on your home screen, just go to the site on your phone’s browser and add it through your browser settings.
It shows a map of all the different crossings, and it’s in real-time, constantly refreshing to keep information accurate.
Here’s how it works: it’s a community reporting program. If someone gets caught by a train, they update the app, and it lets all the other users know of the blocked crossing.
“Yeah, sometimes I've been caught down here, you know, waiting 15 minutes just to go to the dump,” McCumbers said. “It’s do you commit? Or do you turn around and go all the way around town trying to get somewhere?”
“It'll catch you off-guard, I'm sure, if you’re coming up Montana and it’s your only choice right there, you’re stuck,” Starr said.
So far, a fair number of users are all aboard to help out. Fairclough says that between 200 and 300 people are checking it daily, using it to help plan out their commute.
As long as it's useful, she plans to continue updating the service and improving it, keeping the community chugging along.
“I guess at the end of the day, it's just about trying to save people time and frustration,” Fairclough said.
