Route planning for UK

geezor · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 03, 2004 Posts: 19

Using TT2 for route planning was never a problem. From map view or navigator I would enter the town / city, the dropdown menu would prompt for a street, and finally a number. TT3 with postcode support is behaving like a mare. I enter the town / city as before and get the drop down menu. Now if I enter a street that is common (the Crescent for example) it gives a list of numerous Crescents with differing postcodes. If I don`t know the postcode how the hell am I supposed to pick right one? as it will show any of them at the town I have entered although they are nowhere near geographically. there are 7 in total listed under Letchworth but 2 are in London, 1 in Watford, 3 in the SG postcode and one in Welwyn. As I want the SG post code I could still be sent to any 3 in a 10 mile radius. This is not acceptable for a routing program that`s supposed to send you to the correct address, all this does if you dont` know the postcode is get you lost. Can I turn off the postcode facility and use it as in TT2 or do I need to know the full postal address. Am I being fussy in saying that this is sloppy programming as it should only show The crescent at the town selected? any comments.

DavidW · Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2004 8:14 pm Post subject:

It looks like TomTom have made a stupid mistake in building the Navigator 3 database.

When you selected a 'city' in Navigator 2, you actually got roads in the district, borough or unitary council area with the street name you chose. That didn't lead to that many options, even for common road names - though it was frustrating, as sometimes you had to try a few options to find the right one.

When you select a 'city' in Navigator 3, you get roads in the entire county of the town selected - potentially a much larger number if the name is something common like "High Street". As you've realised, when you pick a common road name, that can lead to considerable ambiguity and many more options to try than Navigator 2. If you don't have a clue what the postcode is, you're potentially going to have to go through a lot of options one by one.

I managed to get your example (The Crescent, Letchworth) on the second try, because I knew it was the SG postcode area, and guessed that Letchworth may well be SGn 1 with it being a fairly major town. For a more extreme example, choose a town in Norfolk (like Stalham) and enter "High Street". I make it 44 options - some of which have the town name in brackets and some don't. (I can get this one first time - it's NR12 9 - my family has property there so I know the postcode).

Tim Buxton has posted in other threads that SmartST Pro 2, which also uses TeleAtlas data, has full hierarchical road names - it knows town and county for each road. This implies that it's not TeleAtlas at fault - it's how TomTom has used the data they got from TeleAtlas.

As it stands, street lookup in Navigator 3 is arguably unusable in many cases, and TomTom really do have to look at this again, with some urgency. The way they've implemented the database may work better in other countries (I don't have the German maps to find out what happens if I search for Hauptstrasse in Bergen) - but it doesn't work in some cases in the UK.

The behaviour of the Navigator 3 database is fine if all you know is the county name and road - or if the road isn't in the database under the town you expect and you choose to search on the county and road name.

However, I agree with your complaint and believe TomTom need urgently to look at this issue - even going as far as to sorting out the database so that it uses city/town names properly, then reissuing the Navigator 3 UK maps. Navigator 3 should use city and town names - possibly by searching on county in case you chose the wrong town, but putting the entry in the town you selected at the top of the list (which it doesn't - it could be anywhere in the list).

I've used Navigator 2 very extensively, and I think my number of posts shows that I'm something of an expert. Usually I'm defending TomTom against complaints - but not on this one. This is utterly stupid - if I want to search on Norfolk, I'll enter Norfolk, not Stalham. If I enter Stalham, I want streets in Stalham, not streets that could be 60 miles away.

The only small crumb of comfort is that my tests indicate that Navigator 3 does use the postcode for disambiguation if you use the "Show TomTom Map" or "Navigate To" options in Contacts. This, of course, assumes you have the postcode in the address field.

David

geezor · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 03, 2004 Posts: 19

Hhhmm.....

I`m glad you`re with me on this one Dave. (as I expect many more will be when they come across it). Your example in Norfolk would drive me nuts as I have no idea what the postcode for that area is. Further to my post, even selecting the correct postcode as SG (my particular area of geographic knowledge) it listed Letchworth as (Norton, Powys) correct if i`m wrong, but WALES for christ sake.

DavidW · Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2004 9:50 pm Post subject:

I was hoping Navigator 3 was going to have better address lookup than Navigator 2 - but it's worse.

The postcodes in Navigator 3 are pretty useless - at five characters they can be literally miles away from where you want to go (though they do seem to have their value for disambiguation when using the Pocket Outlook plugin). Meanwhile, the move from all streets in the district council / borough council / unitary council of the city (Navigator 2) to all streets in the county of the city (Navigator 3) is a retrograde step for sure. I was hoping that city naming would give more precise results - with the option of searching on a less specific term (like a county) if you couldn't find the street you were after with your initial search. Navigator 3 gives less precise results.

I am aware of the Glasgow issue in the context of Navigator 2 - like many large cities, outlying areas fall outside the city council area (I guess Paisley is somewhat similar to your area - so far as I remember, it's pretty much continously built up between Paisley and Glasgow). However, I can hardly claim to be a Glasgow expert - having been there just once. One of Glasgow and Glasgow City should contain your street.

The example I remember was a forum thread to do with a street in an outlying area of Norwich - which, if I remember correctly, was in the Broadland District Council area. Navigator 3 would possibly have found it in Norwich, but only because Norwich is in the database as Norwich (Norfolk), so selecting Norwich will return streets in the whole of Norfolk.

Your next example is how Navigator 2 behaves - it returns all streets in the area in brackets after the town name - if it's St Andrews (Fife), you'll get all streets of the same name in Fife (I'm afraid I'm no expert on Scottish local government, nor did I ever use Navigator 2 in Scotland).

Navigator 3 is returning far more results than Navigator 2 did in England. The town where I live is in Mid Bedfordshire, in the area served by Mid Bedfordshire District Council. If I entered that town name into Navigator 3, I get nothing - it's been omitted from the database completely, despite being a fairly large town with a railway station (Flitwick). It was in the Navigator 2 database.

So, we'll go for the next town along - Steppingley. I enter that, then a street name, Navigator 2 would give me all streets of the same name in Mid Bedfordshire. Navigator 3 gives me all streets of the same name in the whole of Bedfordshire - which I'd guess is South Bedfordshire, Mid Bedfordshire, Bedford Borough and maybe even Luton (which has a unitary council). In fact, a few tests show that I get streets in South Bedfordshire, Mid Bedfordshire and Bedford Borough - but not Luton.

David

DavidW · Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2004 9:58 pm Post subject:

Having linked one thread where this is being discussed to this one, I ought to provide a link the other way. Take a look at this thread - particularly from the top of the second page.

David

matt_e · Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2004 10:08 pm Post subject:

I encountered this the other day when I was looking for a road in Kingston without knowing the postcode. Took forever to work out which was the appropriate road as I got in to a vicious circle (the precise details of which I can't remember). Bad design from TT on this one.
Matt

x1-immy · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 29, 2004 Posts: 14

I agree, ive not tried TT2 but I have just purchased TT3 and trying to find any street in it is mindboggling to say the least. Thank god for the external postcode program.

However, for the money that Tomtom charge, and for it being the 3rd generation version of their product, the address look up is very dire indeed.
Have their programmers not heard of the word user friendly? Leaves alot to be desired.

Oldie · Posted: Sat May 01, 2004 8:10 am Post subject:

I have just upgraded to TTN3 and as you have all said the Address Lookup is a backward step. I hope that I don't have to go to too many High Streets in Counties that I don't know.

The new Itinerary is good although you need to be careful when picking a Drive-by as it may be on the wrong side of a dual carriageway. TTN will then find some way of taking you to it.

I have managed to transfer some test routes from AutoRoute 2001 into TTN3 using the .ITN file and will release it in my next version of POIConverter.

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