'avoid traffic' - useless?

[TonyHoyle]

I've activated the the trial of the traffic avoidance program on my TT1 and it doesn't appear to do anything of any use whatsoever - certainly nowhere near worth £60/year.

For example, going from one side of Manchester to the other on Saturday afternoon. It sent me up the A6 into Manchester, through the busiest stretch... although the traffic stated that it was up to date it recorded *no* congestion on that road (on Saturday afternoon it's basically a carpark up there... nobody is going anywhere - there are several alternative and faster routes, which I decided to take - most of the way TT was telling me to turn around... )

I just checked and zoomed out to the whole Manchester area.

This shows *one* traffic jam in the whole region. On the M60. It's not just limiting itself to motorways though - it completely misses the permanent jam at the turnoff for the Trafford centre.

Do TT seriously think anyone would pay for this? If it doesn't work in cities where does it work?

[Darren]

TomTom use the traffic feed from iTIS. iTIS supply traffic data to the majority of TMC enabled GPS systems in the UK. Indeed until RAC TrafficMaster won a licence recently they were the only supplier.

Traffic data does appear variable, sometimes its accurate, others it is not and this is more the fault of iTIS and their collection methods.
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Darren Griffin

[TonyHoyle]

The data isn't only innacurate it's basically nonexistent.

The congestion around Manchester is mostly fairly predictable - it happens at the same times on the same days. It doesn't take a lot of data gathering.. they could just set it to report the same congestion each day and it'd be 90% accurate.

Instead the satnav stated that there wasn't any congestion at all. Anywhere.

It's OK for me as I know the area and basically ignore the satnav half the time anyway, but someone coming into the city from outside would be stuffed. The same as when I go to visit another city - I have *zero* confidence that TT would send me a good route.

[chris_w]

I've had a few good experiences with it where it has actually saved me time.

But it's not really worth the money as the majority of the time it is way off the mark. Especially at weekends.

unless it improves I won't be renewing my subscription when it runs out.
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Thanks,

Chris

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