TT One and M6 Toll road

DaveO1959 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Nov 25, 2005 Posts: 23

On a recent trip to Center Parcs in Elevden from Chester my TT1 refused to route via the M6 toll despite the preferences being set to "always use toll roads".

I can only assume the M6 toll route is slightly longer in distance terms than the old route via the M6 in Birmingham and both routes have the same road speed in the map.

Has anyone else experienced this or have an alternative explanation? Does your TT1 (or Go) avoid the M6 toll at all costs?

The M6 toll was very quiet and I just took it anyway and the TT1 re-routed accordingly with no change to expected arrival time so there can't be a lot in it distance wise if my theory is correct.

Another inconsistency I noticed was that on the way down, the route from my house was south east from Chester i.e. A55/A51/A500 to join the M6.

On the way back up north, the route calculated was M6/M56/A55. That is much longer as you are not cutting off the diagonal that the A51/A500 routes does. You are essentially going north then west instead of heading in a north-westerly direction. I have taken that route myself in the past if I have not felt like negotiating the A roads and speed cameras but I was surprised it came up on the TT1.

If you map the route using Multimap or the AA, they always come up with the A51/A500 route so I am curious why the TT1 would choose a different way home than the outward journey that used the A51/A500 route favoured by the on-line providers.

I did not change preferences to shortest - it was always on fastest.

Anyone any ideas why?

Dave

JLee · Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 6:08 pm Post subject:

On your first point I agree with your theory. I think the preference 'always use toll roads' means just use them without asking if they fit in with the calculated route. Unless the toll road is shorter in distance than the parrallel M6 motorway I guess the tomtom would always opt for the M6 since it's the same speed. I guess it's not clever enough to know the toll road will be quiter. As a solution you could add the toll road as a POI (make one for north and one for south) and ask tomtom to go that way either via the 'navigate via' option or by using it as a waypoint on an Itinery.

There is a POI download available on Oldboy's site of all motorway junctions that you can use for that sort of thing.