Hi everyone i was one of those people that went out immidietly and subscribed to the XM NAVTRAFFIC to see if it would help on my routes around Miami (which is unbelievebly congested all the time).

So far here are my thoughts about the whole thing..maybe it will help someone decide not to get the feature.

It seems as tho XM knows which roads are consistently congested because on roads that usually are they put the red blinking light on it even when there is no traffic. Also when i set in destinations it doesnt really alter the route at all in terms of how much traffic is on the route. I feel as tho when im on a highway like I-75 heading down south and i see theres traffic its like the only thing it helps me with is to tell me theres slow traffic ahead.And i usually dont get off the highway and take innerstreets. Also when there is construction or accidents it usually doesnt show up on the screen for a while, and i have no idea how long it takes for it to register the incident. I live in a fairly big area for them to cover (Miami/Ftlauderdale) and it seems like they still have a long way of perfecting this service.

The only thing i guess i do like is when you clik on the traffic info button and it tells you all the incidents on the road.

FINAL VERDICT...I COULD HAVE GONE JUST FINE WITHOUT IT. DIDNT ALTER MY COMMUTE ANYWHERE WHATSOEVER. I only like the service for ESPN radio

 

For the extra $2 per month... I'd say it's a pretty good deal.

I'm in Los Angeles - and it's accurate down to .5 mile long sections.
I'm driving East on the 210 and it's showing varying yellow and red sections on the westbound really accurately. So maybe it depends on what sort of video/monitored traffic coverage you have in your area.
Several times it showed the accident icon and as I drove by it it was within 100 feet or so. Pretty impressive.
I think you can hit reroute and have it give you an alternate route - haven't tried this yet.

 

+1 I think L.A. coverage is very good. I decided not to follow a calculated route once because I knew there was a shorter route. I quickly realized it the calculated route took traffic into consideration when I got stuck in I-5 traffic.

 

Agreed. I think it depends on how well traffic is generally tracked in your area. I find the system to be very spot on with the freeway driving I do to and from work. I believe it's about 2-3 minutes behind actual traffic patterns. Would never want to buy another car without it.

 

I'd bet satisfaction with the service is based on how detailed the coverage is in your area. I live and work in downtown Dallas, and find the coverage pretty worthless. We don't have any details for traffic flow. Just alerts for accidents.

My free trial also ended about a month after service was activated. I don't know why, but the icon disappeared. I will pay for the service once coverage is better.

 

love it- i know if i'm going to run late and can phone ahead, or grab a coffee, whatever. i drive a lot for work

 

Visit this site for the coverage, click on your state and drill down... notice how most areas only alert to traffic, they don't actually have traffic flow data.

http://www.xmradio.com/navtraffic/market_coverage.xmc

UltimateGee, Miami doesn't have traffic flow, so it's useless now except for the alerts you spoke about... but those that have the flow data say it's good. I'm in the same position in CT, we only have incident data as well But I should get a change to test the flow in the next week or so when I take a trip to NJ through NY... but even for NYC, there's very little flow data.

Overall it's somewhat disappointing because very few roads actually have working flow service. but like it was mentioned in a previous post, for $2.00/mo, it's kind of cool to have the traffic alerts. It's come in handy twice in the 2 weeks I've had the car... I have the choice of two main roads to take , each morning I pull up the traffic info and see if one of the roads has accidents, then take the route that's best. the other day one of the roads had an over turned vehicle, disabled vehicle and 2 accidents... so it saved me from taking that trip... it was manual, but atleast I recieved that info.

 

For me its great as I happen to be in a big market for traffic reporting and I commute on the main roads. I've been saved once or twice from the accident alerts - and I laugh when I see the overturned car icon letting me know of the accident.

I think it all depends on the market you are in and if you travel roads they cover. Personally I love it.

 

Kring, where in CT are you?

 

it is useful for me around DC. So is the free Google Maps w realtime traffic on my Palm 700 ---but the screen is too small to look at while driving. The nav functions very well fro me all around too.

 

West Hartford, I commute to Trumbull.

 

It's okay here in Phx, the info is nice to have, will only get better with time, I hope.

 

I haven't found it that useful. Then again, I don't deal with rush hour traffic on the various highways around here, benefit of sleeping late and going in to work around 10 usually and also coming home 6-7-ish

I don't think it's worth the 10/month standalone. If I were going to continue subscribing to XM radio, it's probably worth the extra 2 or 3 bucks, but I'm not impressed enough with XM to keep it past the trial period.

 

Ok lets me re-sum up my impression:

It is definetly worth the 2$ extra a month...But i guess you can say my first impressions about this service when i heard about it, were way beyond anything i received... This morning there was a bad accident and it spotted it pretty good..maybe a 1/4mile away from the actual scene but the info was on point that Northbound and southbound had delays due to the accident heading northbound...

 

Oh, not too far. I'm down in Stamford.