How Oculus Rail Is Fixing Blocked Crossings
Stop me if you’ve ever gotten stuck behind a train.
The red lights start flashing, the gates drop, and the rumbling of steel fills the air. Minutes crawl by as car after car clanks past. You check your watch, check your phone, check your patience. The train doesn’t care.
In Norfolk, Virginia, those moments weren’t just idle frustration. They were emails, calls, and complaints landing in the inbox of then–City Council member Andria McClellan. Over her eight and a half years on council, she heard the same story hundreds—maybe thousands—of times: blocked crossings that held up traffic, frustrated residents, and, worst of all, ambulances and fire trucks stuck on the wrong side of the tracks.
“I had constituents who were very frustrated with the trains stopping on the tracks,” McClellan says. “I went in search of a solution and found that the ones out there were too expensive, too time-consuming, and didn’t really solve the problem.”
That search led to something bigger than she expected. The problem wasn’t political—it was technological. And in 2024, McClellan decided to do something few local officials ever do: she built a company to fix it.
