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Joined: Mar 14, 2004 Posts: 297 Location: Dundee, Scotland UK
Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 12:28 am Post subject:
From my experience (Tayside, Fife, Aberdeenshire, Strathclyde, and Lothian) I am finding my RDS and/or GPRS traffic information on my Go 730 to be more accurate at the moment. Providing more accurate warnings for roadworks and lane restrictions and closures etc which is handy when planning a route and for the inevitable congestion.
Never seen anything of this sort or the HD system apart from one location of roadworks which doesn't even exist. Seems like it's stuck.
E.g, an accident on the A9 closing the southbound carriageway. Reported on the 730 with RDS traffic (Before HD reported it) as a road closure due to accident between the correct junctions, and showed congested traffic (Average speed of 30kph apparently) backing up before the closed road. Traffic cams verified this.
The Go 540 eventually showed "Incident" along a much larger stretch of the A9 with no road closure and showed no traffic congestion.
From what I can make out, the RDS/GPRS feeds appear to tie in with sources like BBC travel news, and trafficscotland.org. HD traffic just seems to pluck random incidents out the air and from there imagination. As for the ability for TomTom to use the SIM inside my 540 to gauge my speed and directions....leaves a lot to be desired. I've found myself regularly freely flowing through traffic that is allegedly congested with no change on the 540 and found myself regularly stuck in traffic which has no alleged delay. Could it be a case of they require several Voda SIM to pass through a particular section to verify before they will display any or no congestion? I'm not sure.
I get the impression that Tomtom are being very selective as to where they are providing coverage and when. Not as "Full coverage" as they'd have us believe. It's looking to me more and more like HD traffic is just a gimmick to get people subscribing for the "Live services" whilst the RDS/GPRS services are still more accurate. For me anyway.
I'm giving TomTom the benefit of the doubt, and I've fed all my experiences back to them. If it doesn't improve in the next few months I WILL be cancelling my subscription and returning to the GPRS/RDS system until they can get it sorted out. Seems to me the only place they have plentiful information is in Germany at the moment, according to the Beta route planner. This was the sort of level of information I was expecting on UK HD Traffic personally. And comparing it [Germany] to the UK, it's pritty poor right now.
I can't honestly sit here and says it's been all bad all of the time. I have found it to report congested traffic (mainly in Edinburgh) reasonably accurately several times which was impressive but it still falls way short of my expectations of what it should be whether it's only just fully launched or not.
This is just my experience obviously. _________________ Graeme Bennett
Go 540 LIVE
App. 9.510.1234792.1 (2039,04/04/2013)
United Kingdom & ROI v945.6174
I use the GPRS subscription every day and never had a problem with it.
The HD traffic seems a waste of time, as all it seems to do from what I have read is warn you if about 3 cars slow down then calls it a traffic jam.
I would rather be warned of genuine lengthy delays, which is what the GPRS service does very nicely.
The old traffic (still current for some!) had the problem that situations didn't clear quickly. So you couldn't rely on the information being accurate, and therefore didn't know whether you should ignore or not. If that's the case, what are you really paying for?
The HD traffic does do this 3 cars slow down thing (okay, a few more) but it is very dynamic and that is good to allow you to see what is really happening. When travelling back from Manchester through some road works, the traffic was in a 3-6 min varying delay, but that meant I knew it was real, and accurate. And it was. If it appears and goes from 3 to 6 to 9 to 20 to 60 to 120, then you know it is something to avoid, it is real, and that it is reliable.
The difference is reliability.
Unfortunately, there are some things that are still unreliable, like closures which aren't based on real traffic info. But the associated slow-downs are usually picking it up.
FWIW, using the live traffic cameras and the HD traffic web site (or planner) is a good way to check its operation. You can watch for yourself in near-real-time how the traffic is responding and is reported. From what I've seen, it is very accurate.
Can anyone confirm that the GPRS/RDS rerouting still doesn't recheck the original optimal (if no congestion) route when it does an update after chosing an alternative? ......hope that makes sense! _________________ Tom Tom GO 720
Orange M3100, Orange SPV M5000
TomTom Navigator 6, Destinator 6
Holux GPSslim
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