GPRS traffic - total failure

jpg1 · Regular Visitor Joined: Mar 20, 2009 Posts: 61

Hi, did anyone attempt to use GPRS traffic around 5pm today? I was driving home from work and heard on Capital Radio that J10-J9 (anticlockwise) had long delays. I switched on my Go 530 with GPRS to check whether it showed up, there were no delays whatsoever around London...!!

The HD traffic website was showing the jam that the radio mentioned....!

jpg1 · Regular Visitor Joined: Mar 20, 2009 Posts: 61

Hi - I just realised I didn't say which road this was on - doh!

It was the M25 around J10-9 (anticlockwise) on Mon 23rd March.

PaulB2005 · Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2009 12:48 pm Post subject:

I was there about 3:30pm and can confirm that HD Traffic showed the jam (as did the Traffic Announcements on the radio and the M25 Matrix Boards) and routed me away from it.... Sorry but i don't use GPRS Traffic so can't comment on that....

jpg1 · Regular Visitor Joined: Mar 20, 2009 Posts: 61

Thanks PaulB2005, I saw it showing on HD traffic when I got home.

Do you have the HD traffic set up to automatically route you around any problems, or do you set it so that it tells you when it sees a jam ahead and you still have to decide whether to turn off or not?

I guess what I'm saying is, do you trust HD traffic enough to let it route you automatically round a "jam", whether it actually exists or not?

PaulB2005 · Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2009 3:53 pm Post subject:

It have it set so if it finds a faster route it'll offer me the choice of sticking with the route or diverting. Worked well yesterday.

Travelling from Durham / Sunderland to Sutton, London. I normally go A1, M1 then M25, using a Via Point to force it to ignore the M18 and A1 (7 miles longer but faster in real life)

Anyway, big delay on M1 so stayed on A1 (much better now roundabouts have gone) as we got near M11 there was delay on the A14 so we stayed on the A1 all the way to the M25. As we came round the M25 we were warned of the accident at Junction 8 so we were routed up the A3 instead of the A217. Then on the A3 we were warned the Ewell By Pass was congested (it was as we passed it) so we went on and came off at Worcester Park. Apart from a few junctions (and a 10 minute leg stretch) we never stopped in 5 hours and it only took 25 minutes longer than the initial M1- M25 route....

We thought it worked really well....

jpg1 · Regular Visitor Joined: Mar 20, 2009 Posts: 61

Sounds great! Do you have a 540/740/940?

And do you find it is very quick to tell you about traffic with plenty of notice, or does it lag a little or lose connection every so often?

PaulB2005 · Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2009 6:35 pm Post subject:

matthewj · Frequent Visitor Joined: Apr 03, 2006 Posts: 751

chrisjr · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 26, 2006 Posts: 32

Or you could use the Highways Agency site

http://www.highways.gov.uk/traffic/traffic.aspx

Use the links and it shows a map of the motorway and major A roads where you can see incidents. You can even read the matrix signs on the motorway!

And on the Traffic England site (which is actually the same thing as the above) you can link to strip maps of the motorways to see even more details and clickable icons to view the cameras.

http://www.trafficengland.com/TCC/SchematicTable/ViewTable.do

And if you are real traffic info anorak you can download a little application that when running sits on the taskbar on your PC and downloads traffic info which you can read in a little pop up at the click of a mouse.

Though not a lot of use if you are in the car Smile

I rather think Her Majesty's Finest would take a dim view of you looking up traffic info on you mobile broadband equipped laptop whilst driving Shocked

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