You're absolutely right Kenny, I get a signal from XM Traffic, the word Traffic is always green, but absolutely no information, and they claim it's active here in Albuquerque. They blame NavTeq, NavTeq sends me to XM............

 

Terry:

I think you're right on. The system is not smart enough to switch from 'fastest route' thinking when looking for detours. So if there are no major highways nearby, it won't detour you. This is something that Garmin's units do very well, so I'm surprised this one doesn't. It's probably something we ought to all post feedback on to zenrin since they do the software for this:

http://www.zenrin.com/navsoft.asp

Regards,
Tamir

 

Are the roads that you are on covered by NavTraffic? You could be getting a signal just fine but if you are on highways or streets they dont cover you wont get any readout on the screen. XM has a traffic map on their website somewhere that lists the roads they will cover in your area.

And I disagree that it wont detour you onto side roads as it did just that for me coming back from Baltimore this weekend. Three or four side roads and I was back on the highway.

 

I frequently drive the DC to Philadelphia corridor, and every time I hit traffic on I95 north or south, the Nav system does not detour me. It tells me there is traffic ahead, and when I try to manually detour around traffic it says it can't find any alternative routes even when I know there are routes. I wonder if there is some setting that I have set wrong?

Regards,
Tamir

 

I don't find the traffic info very intuitive at all..... My free 3 month is up in a few weeks and I don't think I am goin to renew it. Especially at 20/month.. WTF.............

so is everyone paying that much for this?

 

Service Pricing:
XM NavTraffic only: $9.95 per month
XM NavTraffic and XM radio combined: $12.95 radio plus $3.99 NavTraffic = $16.94 per month.

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

 

Yeah I was gonna say, its only a few more bucks a month.

To me, the navtraffic saving me just once from sitting for hours and hours on a closed highway more than makes up for the $50 a year it costs.

 

According to XM's coverage guide, yes the main roads here are covered. I get the green traffic icon, so I know the signal is coming from XM, just not from here! I think the problem lies with NavTeq.

Albuquerque Traffic

 

I live in the DC Metro Area, my navi has never redirected me if I input a destination. I've always figured that it was because it only give me traffic information for major highways, this leads me to believe that the navi has absolutely no idea how bad traffic is on other less major highways (i.e. it'll know that traffic on I-95 is bad, but will have no idea how bad traffic is on US-1, which runs parallel with I-95).

The only time its ever had information on roads that aren't major, are when there is an accident and/or construction.

I still use the service because I can just look up "Nearby Traffic Info" and get a sense of how bad traffic is in the area. Although it won't tell me detours, I can typically figure out my route based on whats already given.

 

Isn't this part self explanatory though? NavTraffic will only give you flow information on roads that it has that service on. It has no idea how bad traffic is on less major highways because, well, it shouldnt - those roads aren't covered for flow by NavTraffic. It only has incident information on smaller roads - because thats how it works - those roads are lsited as 'incident enabled' and not 'flow enabled' . Rt 1 is an example of that.

 

By the way, the DETOUR never worked for me. Blah