The three minutes your sat‑nav doesn't know about.

Every navigation app treats a level crossing as open road. Crossclear, made by Zenycat, tells drivers when the barriers will be down, and for how long.

Product: Level crossing forecasts for drivers
Coverage: Great Britain
Platforms: Web app, with phone app & widget next

Crossclear on a phone: Likely closed, may open briefly in 2 min, then opens in about 5 min.

5,000+level crossings covered across Great Britain

0paid data sources. It runs on open rail feeds

2questions on screen: open or closed, and for how long

01 / The idea

Nobody publishes whether a gate is open. Trains are public.

There is no feed for barrier status. But where every train is, and where it's due next, is open data. So we forecast the gate from the trains: which ones pass which crossing, and what the barriers do around each one.

It started as a different idea, a plugin for Google Maps and Waze. Neither allows one. That pushed us to the part that mattered anyway. The forecast is the product. The app is the quickest way to put it in front of drivers and prove it against real gates.

02 / What we made

A forecast you can read from the driver's seat.

A web app that works for any crossing in the country, with a phone app and a home screen widget following it. Drivers stopped at a gate can report what they see in one tap, and every report checks the forecast against the real thing.

First version: the headline is when the next train is due. — The first version told you about the train. The current one tells you about the gate.

Current version: Likely closed, with a forecast bar. — The first version told you about the train. The current one tells you about the gate.

03 / The interface

Three decisions that did most of the work.

Likely closed

Opens in about3 min

1Say “likely”

It's a forecast, so the headline says so. One word replaced a paragraph of disclaimer.

Now102030 min

2Show the gate, not the trains

The next half hour as a strip of open and closed. The stripes come from a real barrier arm, and still read without colour.

3A badger that never says “go”

It waits, walks, or scratches its head when the app isn't sure. It never tells you it's safe to cross.

Likely closed. — Red and green only appear when the app stands behind the answer. An old answer is never left on screen.

Likely open. — Red and green only appear when the app stands behind the answer. An old answer is never left on screen.

Home screen widgets showing Likely closed. — The widget design: check the gate before you pick up the car keys.

04 / Next

Back to where the idea started.

Navigation apps already warn that a crossing is ahead. None of them know if it's shut. A forecast that says “closed between these minutes” is something a route planner can use the same way it uses traffic. That's the conversation the app is building the evidence for.

Crossclear is a Zenycat product. Screens show sample trains and times. Crossclear is independent of Network Rail.

More work

Digital transformationDuctTake & Lin Sing

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