Road Block and Motorway problems

SimonD · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003 12:46 am Post subject: Road Block and Motorway problems

I have recently had great problems trying to re-calculate routes, if I am on a motorway and want to avoid a traffic jam , TomTom calculates a route whcih leaves the motorway at the next junction, then tells me to turn round and rejoin the motorway!! Also the avoid road block does the same! Why does TomTom *ALWAYS* want to use the motorway often avoiding obvious alternative routes? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

jaguar

Etwell · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003 8:12 pm Post subject:

I seem to remember that someone else was asking about how to avoid or use certain types of road.

Someone answered that the way to do this was to go into the section of TT that sets the speed for the various types of road and ammend this to give weighting for or against whatever you wanted to avoid etc.

Might help, might not.

Howarduk · Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2003 1:42 am Post subject:

I have also noticed that it definitely has a strong bias towards Motorways. I live in Romford in Essex. The quickest way to go to Edgware is along the North Circular, down Totteridge Lane and into Edgware. but it persists in trying to take me around the M25 then down the A1.
The piece of advice that was in a previous thread said that if you make all the speeds in "properties" identical it wouldnt use motorways. I did try that but it didnt work for me. I will try it again though and see if it works that time.
Also in a thread it said that "strict" was supposed to calcualte shortest distance, but for me it still wants to send me around the M25 from Romford to Edgware.

MrT · Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2003 8:32 am Post subject: Romford to Edgeware

The quickest route in theory driving at the standard limits from Romford to Edgeware is by the M25. On Autoroute the M25 route is 32 miles and about 35 minutes as the M25/A1 is 70mph all the way. The A406/Totteridge Route is 21 miles and about 50 minutes, but you have a lot of minor roads which are set at less than 30mph.

However in reality these roads are not free flowing so you would need to set your speeds to what you actually average on these roads to get a more accurate calculation.

SimonD · Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2003 6:35 pm Post subject: Thnaks for the advice

Thank you all who have suggested how to try to get round this problem. However, this does not resolve the issue that the 'avoid roadblock' and alternative route do not work! I will try to log some sort of call with TomTom support. I will post any answers here.

Robin2 · Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2003 8:09 pm Post subject:

You can change the bias towards motorways by resetting the speeds on different types of road, so that other roads are much closer to whatever motorway speed you have chosen. TomTom always tries to calculate the quickest route, and if you have the motorway speed set much faster than anything else, it will try to get you back on the motorway as soon as possible.
I changed mine, and it started showing some very interesting routes!
Robin

ChrisDev · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 30, 2003 Posts: 33

I've tried changing the speeds of the different types of roads, and although it does make some difference, the time taken to calculate the route makes it unusable for long journeys.

Does anyone know what the TT equivilant of a dual carrageway is? Is it classed as 'Major Road'? The problem I have is that it can't distinguish between a normal A road (where the speed can be as low as 40mph) and a dual carrageway where it can be 70mph.

Phreakster · Occasional Visitor Joined: Sep 16, 2003 Posts: 19

In order to get the alternative routes and road block functions to work as they should you need to enable strict calculation. This does takes slightly longer to calculate the route as it analyses more roads, but at least you get what you want and not the same route again and again.

DavidW · Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2003 7:14 pm Post subject:

Strict calculation should help (I tend to use it all the time - it is fine on my hardware unless the route is very long, though some people may find it unacceptably slow).

If you find yourself routed back onto a main road you want to avoid and you've got strict calculation enabled, then the best thing to do is to tap "Alternative routes" and avoid that road. That screen is useful as a look-ahead for the main roads that are in your route in this case.

You can always cancel the avoids later by selecting Original route - if you think you've driven far enough to avoid the problem or you hear on the radio that the problem has cleared.

If it's safe to look at the display (ideally you're parked up or you have a passenger that can do this for you, or possibly you're in completely stationary traffic), you can, after the a route is calculated, switch to map view, and step through the new route using the left and right arrows on screen (or left and right presses of the D-pad). Instructions can also be used.

Hopefully these features will be enhanced in a future version - the ability to mark a road blocked for a specific length in a particular directly map view is just one enhancement that I would welcome.

My ideal would be sufficient enhancement to support either TMC or data from Trafficmaster (probably via GPRS). Trafficmaster do have a contract to supply Travel-i with their data, which is used on certain Symbian based phones via a subscription. Unfortunately nobody has developed a Pocket PC application that will support this data. At the moment, I don't think there's the necessary support in the TomTom SDK for traffic conditions add-ins. As I remember, there's support in the TomTom SDK for displaying icons on roads, but not rerouting.

David

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