TTN5 and the M6 Toll Road

[NMatthew]

Many of us here commented at the lack of the M6 Toll Road in TTN3 last year, (even though the road was open and had been known about for years before - but that's another story). Now, praise be, the TTN5 maps have the M6 Toll on. Hurrah! (If you navigate in the North Birmingham area you'll appreciate what an impact on routing the new road has).

Here's a funny thing though. TTN5 does not use the new road! Try a journey along the M6 from its junction with the M1 in the South to, say, Manchester. Tomtom will take you along the M6 and not along the toll road. The reason is that the M6 Toll Road is 5 miles longer than the M6. And, as TTN5 does not realise that the average speed acheivable between junctions 2 and 11 of the M6 would not worry a tortoise in a race it therefore prefers to use the old road. D'oh.

So a swift use of the 'via' facility in route planning is needed to get the actual quickest route.

BTW, this is not a compliant as such, but a speed option such as in Autoroute (and like TTN3 had) that would allow users to set Urban Motorway speeds as well as other roads types would sort this out.

Neil
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Audi TT Coupe Quattro
BMW 535d M Sport Touring

[Diplo]

How would being able to set a motorway speed help, though, since both the M6 and M6 Toll would be classed as motorways? If they are both considered motorways they will have the same speed limit and, all things being equal, TomTom will still prefer the shortest route.

I agree it would be nice to be able to choose speeds again but much more granularity is needed for this to be useful. You really need to be able to grade every major 'A' road and motorway individually, preferably with time boundaries (so you could say M6 speed at rush hour is 20 mph and at 3AM it's 70 mph etc.). This kind of thing would really help people tailor the device to their preferences based on local knowledge and experience.
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Medion 95000 | TT3.07 | Kingston 512MB SD

[rtj70]

I had to travel from Manchester to somewhere near Dartford crossing last week. TomTom routed me via the M6 Toll. When it asked if I wanted to use the toll road I initially clicked no by mistake and the alternative via normal M6 was slightly shorter and quicker (not in the real world of course). But TomTom did the sensible thing and choose the M6 Toll for me :D

[NMatthew]

Diplo, I specifically mentioned "Urban Motorway". In Autoroute you can set preferences for both "Motorway" for normal free-flowing motorway stretches, and "Urban Motorway" for those in and around cities, notably the M25. Autoroute knows which is which, so I was just suggesting that this would be great in TTN5 to distinguish the M6 from M6 Toll. TTN5's routing seems quite sophisticated, It seems to me that for shorter journeys it favours a shorter route (more direct), and for longer journeys it favours a quicker route (bigger roads). You also see non-symmetric routes where the way home is different to the way you came.

Neil
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Audi TT Coupe Quattro
BMW 535d M Sport Touring

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