Take me to the next petrol station

[Rowen]

Is it possible to get TomTom to take you to the next petrol station POI which is on, or close too your route? Would be handy for those times you fly past the services on the motorway and then look at your fuel guage Not to handy if it reckons you should spin round at the next junction, back to the services, fill up, go to the next junction, turn round again and resume the original journey, just oz that station was only 1/2 mile away...



Rob

[nicknick]

TomTom shows you nearby POI in a radial distance from your location (not road distance - as you will see when it calculates the route to it), so the one you just passed will be the nearest, but the name of the others in the list may help you guess which is the next, or even if you see which ones get 'nearer' after a few more miles travel.


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Nick

[Rowen]

Thats what I thought... thanks Nick!



have to see if the distance shown on the POI screen decreases as you approach it... that could work...

[DavidW]

As a general comment, I wouldn't rely completely on the Petrol Station POI. This isn't a problem with the data being wrong so much as the data ageing.





A tremendous number of petrol stations are closing down; for many, their economics are on a knife-edge now, with the profit per litre on fuel being tiny. If they have significant income from other operations - the shop, maybe a car wash or similar, they'll probably stay in business. Of course, supermarket petrol stations often operate as something of a loss-leader.



Many non-supermarket stations have closed down in the past year or two - so I would be very wary of driving to one in the POI database with a critical fuel situation - you may get there to find it's closed.





This is even more important for those of us with diesel vehicles with high-pressure fuel systems. These systems are often not self-bleeding, so you can require a mechanic to bleed the system manually if you run the tank dry.



The high pressure Bosch system on my diesel Zafira won't self-bleed - so I make jolly sure that I don't run out of fuel - indeed, I don't like to have less than about 80 miles worth of fuel left in the tank, particularly as there's probably some sludge in the bottom of my tank and I don't much want to pull that into my fuel filter or, even worse, through the filter into the fuel injection system (I've already had to have the injection pump and all four injectors replaced once at a cost of 3500 pounds after a mysterious and sudden loss of fuel pressure - though it turned out that the fuel pressure was always poor from new and fortunately Vauxhall paid 90% of the bill).





There's at least four petrol stations within ten miles radius of where I live (western mid Bedfordshire) that have closed but are still in the TomTom POI database.





I wonder - is it worth having a pinned topic for POI errors? Not only are many petrol stations in the built-in POI data closed, but they've got the location of the Post Office in Flitwick incorrect. The address is correct, but the street numbers round the railway bridge are bizarre and they've finished up showing the Post Office on the wrong side of the railway line!



Indeed, many Post Offices are closing as well - again for economic reasons...







David

[Cessquill]

Raised a similar point in the Wish List a while ago to have the option of more intelligent POIs, so that you could ask "where is the nearest petrol station/restaurant/etc. that's on the way to where I'm going?" (or at least not where I've just come from). A toggleable option would be cool.



Take the point that POIs in the built in system are largely becoming out of date, plus some interesting innaccuracies (it flag a restaurant up where there is a factory, no restaurants nearby and never have been - Friday afternoon temp entering data...?).



I'm waiting for the day when wireless networking means you're always on-line and pulling from a complete list of bang up-to-date POIs (from the Yellow Pages, perhaps?)...
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What's going on? Where am I?

[Rowen]

David- I know exactkey what you mean about not wanting to run dry - I always try to fill up when I have 1/4 tank left.... trouble is that only gives me a 220 - 260 range :/



I've noticed a lot of petrol stations in the various POI databases are gone and some that have been for years.... I don't suppose anyone works for one of the companies and has a list of addresses? (I'm currently working on a little app that will convert addresses to POIs :D )



Cessquill- maybe when we have real wirlesss internet access our gos systems will just look up the nearest resturants/petrol stations from an online directory... could have access to every business type in the car! Beats filling up the boot with copies of the yellow pages ;)

[LocktightT]

Hi all



I recently set up a BP account for my workplace, I have an excell spreadsheet that shows the UK stations as at May2003 if thats any use to anyone let me know and I will email it?



Locktight

[nicknick]

Locktight,



I would be interested in that list. I have Autoroute 2003 so should be able to convert to TTN POI easily, or I can compare with the (a lot) older (1573 items) BP POI list I have and do it that way.



As long as it's less than 1M file size or my EMail won't like it - but CSV format would be just as good


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Nick

[Talkingbollox]

Rowan, I'm sure you can have "current loaction" type services using mobile phones? I know Orange does it.

[cuk0724]

If you can do it nicknick I would be interested as my company only lets us use BP, and the POI that I have (the same as yours) is a bit out of date.



TomTom do a bit of software that lets you convert from text to POI.

www.tomtom.com/support/ce/support/nav_poi.php

[nicknick]

There are lots of other useful conversion progs in the download section of this site, and I think I have (and use) most of the useful (to me) ones




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Nick

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