Austin Glass kept getting stuck at the train crossing on Barton Avenue and Ormond Boulevard when he came up with an idea for an app.
“I started thinking, there’s got to be a way to know if a train’s there and if it’s stopped and what it’s doing,” Glass said.
Glass, a former Coast Guard officer and Luling resident, set out on a four-year journey to create an app for St. Charles Parish residents to monitor train crossings.
“It was a lot of trial and error, a lot of late nights, a lot of different equipment purchases to try and get the right setup,” Glass said. “It became just sheer will trying to get this done.”
Glass’ app, BlockedTrax, is now available for download from the Apple Store and the Google Play Store.
“I don’t have a technical background,” Glass said. “So to be able to get to this point is fairly significant for me.”
Glass and his wife, Assistant Principal at Destrehan High School Jessica Glass, moved from Florida to New Orleans in 2009. They landed in Luling after Glass left the Coast Guard for the private sector. He now does inspections on commercial vessels, including barges and crew boats.
In his free time after work and on weekends, Glass worked on building the app. He now has a patent pending on the proprietary software system he built.
The app currently monitors the train crossing at Ormond Boulevard, and Barton Avenue will be added in about three to four weeks, Glass said.
The system, which requires physical equipment placed near the tracks, works by identifying when a train crosses the system’s field of vision. Once the system identifies a train, it sends out a message to users. It tracks each car that passes and can track whether the train is speeding up, staying steady or slowing down.
Glass recently added the ability to have live images within the app, and he has other features in mind he hopes to implement in the future.
While the app is not currently profitable, Glass says he sees the usefulness of the app nationwide.
“I thought maybe it would be useful for me, and we could develop it for friends and neighbors in the area,” he said. “When I realized it was an actual nationwide issue, I thought it could be an actual business opportunity.”
Residents across the country, from Houston to Georgia to New Orleans, deal with train crossing delays, he said.
Glass said the feedback from users has been positive. The app has hundreds of downloads so far.
“I hope that it’s useful to residents,” he said. “And I just appreciate everybody who has supported me to this point.”
