TT Traffic Accuracy

djam · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 03, 2003 Posts: 4

Can we start a thread where people can post their experience as to the accuracy of TomTom Traffic. I have yet to travel a route where TTT has successfully warned me of problems, this included a trip from the M4 to the Lake District which took me 8 hours! TTT reported no incidents…

Unless the service improves, I can't really see myself renewing after the trial expires.

Fraserp · Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2004 10:41 am Post subject:

I agree! Both with the traffic forum and the information reliability.

I've only been using it a few days, one day it was spot on, a friend of mine reported real jams on the M6, accidents and roadworks, Traffic had them covered! Thumbs Up

The next day i hit a jam on the M62 that was not reported, I had a 1 hr delay. Strange when some minor problems are. Confused

It's not viable or SAFE to drive and mess with the settings on PDA and phone. I've set mine to get regular updates and i am monotoring the GPRS usage, that element isn't free after all! Whether there was a connectivity issue i dont know. It probably wouldn't have stopped me from travelling, there was no other viable route, but it would have been usefull to give a clearer ETA.

BTW, does anyone know where does TT Traffic get its information from? Clearly its only as good as the source.
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Wee_Eck · Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2004 10:14 am Post subject:

I have had very mixed results from TTT as well.

The first time I used it ...my regular fortnightly journey from Berkshire to Kent round the M25 it stated that there was a queue on the M25 and I would have a 40 minute delay...the delay was actually 42 minutes so spot on Laughing

However this last weekend, it was crap reporting no problems on route whilst my TMC box said there were jams 2-3 junctions ahead and was correct...I updated every few minutes but still no jams on TTT. It is very inconsistent!!!!

Just my twopence worth

Alasdair

drummer · Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2004 8:20 am Post subject:

This morning at 7:00am, TomTom reported an accident with a delay of 52min on the M25 anti-clockwise between J8 & J9. I didn't hear any reports on the radio or on my Trafficmaster freeway unit, so I ignored it and sure enough the route was clear with no delay.

Unless thing seriously improve, I will not be paying for subscription at the end of the trial.

Griff · Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2004 11:35 am Post subject:

I have to agree with what has been said here warned me of an incident on the A40 1 min delay 40 mins later still....... no delays on the M4 and got stuck for an hour I too will not be paying for such an unrelieable service but lets hope Tom Tom can sort these problems in the trial period if they can get it to work well it will be a great add on

emjaiuk · Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2004 5:49 pm Post subject:

Yesterday I had to travel into London during the tube strike, outside the normal rush hour fortunatly. Whilst I wouldn't expect all London jams to be noted, there weren't any at all! This in spite of TT routing me via Brompton Road where there are long term roadworks, which cause delays even without the tube strike, and have been shown on the roadside dot matrix screens for some time.

I don't drive every day, so I'd be interested in in more feed back on TT Traffic, positive as well as negative.

Has anyone experience of TMC in the UK apart from TT?

Mods. Is there scope for a sticky on this for a couple of months?

Malcolm

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Wee_Eck · Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2004 12:38 pm Post subject:

Quick update

I have compared the output from the following:-

getmethere.co.uk
TT Traffic on my Pocket PC
TrafficMaster from Vauxhall.co.uk

They are all slightly different, with trafficmaster showing the least detail and the getmethere site showing the most.

What surprises me is that TTT has the same data source as getmethere...i.e. ITIS

Confused!

Crying or Very sad

nej · Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2004 1:13 pm Post subject:

It is a bit strange that getmehere and TomTomTraffic should be different, given they use the same data source. I suppose it could be that they only process updates every 10 minutes, as opposed to 5 mins on getmehere, or vice versa, if you see what I mean. Who knows...

How do trafficmaster get their data? From road-side cameras? I know ITIS track speeds from tracking-equipped vehicles amongst other things.

There are very few sources of data though (like with Maps) so one would assume that they'd share the same inacurracies.

DavidW · Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2004 5:27 pm Post subject:

Trafficmaster use number plate recognition cameras - which don't store store full number plates, nor do they keep the data for very long, so there's no privacy issues.

The Trafficmaster system is, in my opinion, far superior to the iTIS system, but my understanding is that Trafficmaster won't licence their data for use in navigation systems (even though I don't see TomTom Navigator and similar as real competition to their own Smartnav product).

RDS-TMC in the UK also uses iTIS data.

David

dunno · Regular Visitor Joined: Jun 15, 2004 Posts: 87

i had the opposite effect the first time i used traffic for real was coming back from Birmingham to east Sussex . it was saying most of the m25 was jammed of course i believed it till past the 40 mph road works i then thought rubbish it must be OK so i joined the M25 again which was wrong it was jammed solid all the way to the m23 just like ttt said .
so it looks like it could be if you are in luck or not with them

Pauldp · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 07, 2004 Posts: 26

There used to be a problem with previous versions of the driver not allowing all of the TTT traffic information to be downloaded.

This varied according to the GSM network you are on. I am on orange, and used to get 50ish incidents a download.
At about 3.04T it suddenly jumped to be usually greater than 100 incidents. I have seen it since on a bad day at 373, but rush hour usually gives you 170-230.

BUT, I have a question in with TT currently in that I was travelling home and saw an incident flash up saying that there was an accident on the A34 southbound before the M3 junction. I chose to ignore it as I was far away from it at the time, and by the time you get close to it, it may have cleared. About 1 or 2 updates later it dissappeared. Good I thought. Only to arrive in a 2 mile queue when I got there with the police still present.

Why did TT suddenly decide that the accident had vanished? Its a mystery. Only TT has the answer which I await from their support website.... Confused

R1chard · Regular Visitor Joined: Feb 07, 2004 Posts: 64

I've found TTT to be variable as well. Last month I needed to travel across the Cat and Fiddle pass in Derbyshire. As it is often closed by snow in the winter there are electronically controlled signs at either end to advise motorists of closures. TTT said the road was closed but the electonic signs were blank. A diversion to avoid the "closure" would have added perhaps 50 miles on t my journey so I chose to believe the local signs rather than TTT. Lucky I did as there was no sign of the road being closed.

I had to make the return journey later the same day. TTT still showed the road as being closed but it was open.

Also the M60 was closed at junction 1 yesterday because of an accident. TTT reported the accident but advised that the delay would be 3 minutes. Huh! The M60 was static and it took me half an hour just to get off the slip road at the juction before.

However a small success on the M25 last week. TTT reported a delay. I set it to "minimise delays" and at one point, where the traffic was slow, it routed me off the M25, across the roundabout and straight back on again probably saving me 20 seconds. Well done TomTom!

Richard

Pauldp · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 07, 2004 Posts: 26

Let me give you an answer they gave me off the website on variable traffic data. My replies to them are getting more acidic as time goes on, as I get more unhappy with them.

Customer 25/11/2004 10.48 PM
When the traffic is activated to update every time period and the automatic replan is on, TTN does not always replan. Why?

I also had an incident today where traffic information was downloaded indicating a queue at the end of the A34 onto the M3 when I started my journey. Towards the end of the journey the queue vanished. However when I arrived at this area I had to queue for 20 minutes to get past an accident.
Why did this information suddenly disappear when the incident was present. As were the police.

Auto-response 30/11/2004 04.31 PM
Dear ,

We apologize for not yet having responded to your email dated 25/11/2004 10.48 PM.
We will get back to you as soon as possible and apologize for the delay in answering your query.

Thank you for your patience and best regards,

The TomTom Customer Support Team

Response 15/12/2004 10.58 AM
Dear Mr Dawson-Plincke,

The information that is exchanged between the TomTom Traffic Server and the Traffic Plug-In is minimized through compression and smart filtering algorithms, so that communication costs are minimal.

The amount of data that is exchanged depends on:

The usage frequency – every time you request a traffic update, data will be exchanged.
At what time of day you request information – during rush hour there are more incidents than at night. So, during rush hour more data is retrieved than at night or during the day.
For what map you request information – information is retrieved for the map that is loaded in your TomTom application. The larger the map coverage the more data is retrieved.
How often you request incident details – The details shown in the incident detail screen are retrieved separately.
The country – information of some countries can be better compressed than of others.
The table below provides a calculation of cost for each country per month. Assumptions:
Traffic Plug-In is used during morning and afternoon rush hour each working day, each trip takes 45 minutes.
Traffic information is retrieved every 5 minutes
The full country map is loaded, so all available country information is retrieved.
No details are requested in Traffic View.

GB
NL
D
F

Trips per month 40

Trip duration 45 minutes

Refresh rate Every 5 minutes

Requests per month 40*45/5 = 360

Incidents during rush hour (estimate) 200
50
500
400

Avg. size incident 20 bytes

Total data volume 1.4 MB
0.3 MB
3.4 MB
2.7 MB

Smart filtering reduction 35% 35% 80% 80%
Total data communication per month 0.9 MB 0.2 MB 0.7 MB 0.5 MB
Note: these figures are based on measurements, assumptions and estimates; the correctness of the results cannot be guaranteed.

With best regards,

The TomTom Customer Support Team

Customer 16/12/2004 09.04 PM
I'm really sorry. How does that answer my question?

I am talking about automatic replanning not working, and the fact that a major incident was not displayed on TTN.

alix776 · Posted: Sun Dec 19, 2004 8:29 pm Post subject:

sorry to say this but and this my personal veiw as a user of tt trafic is its not tomtom that proide the data for tomtom traffic its iTis so the data is only as good as iTis provide not only as good as tomtom provide at the company i work at currently there are 2 trucks with satnav one mine with my own system and one with a tmc system and both are as good or bad as the other, sometimes in a 2 hour delay the pionneer system in the other truck will not auto recalculate sometimes it will i dont use the auto recalctulation personally as i and the other driver have a secondary tmc sytem in the form of a cb raidio Laughing

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Pauldp · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 07, 2004 Posts: 26

I do know about the information sources, but the question I have asked has not got a satisfactory answer. If TT are able to prove that it is not a fault on their part of the system, but on ITIS then fine. But it would be a good idea to tell the customer.

However, in this case ITIS did have the information, but it went away again after 5 minutes! The big question here is, has some information transfered from ITIS servers to TT, and then to me, got lost?

It has happened before on different version of the TTT not downloading all the data so it is possible for TT to be at fault.

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