Traffic info by radio TMC or TomTom's HD?

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Pitts Pilot

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Has anyone got any experience with TMC (Traffic Message Channel) for traffic info, versus TomTom's HD traffic subscription service?

I've heard the TomTom traffic info is superior to TMC as TMC can be difficult to pick up in some places, but I have never made a comparison.

Comments?

Thanks :)
 
I have used both.

The TomTom service tends to update more often where as TMC can sometimes be 15 minutes or more our of date.

TomTom also do some clever predictive stuff so. For example, if there is a road that gets congested every Monday morning, they can reroute you. With TMC you have to wait for the congestion to happen before you get told.

Finally the TomTom system reports on ALL roads not just the major ones. They do this by taking mobile phone tracking info from one of the big networks and use it to work out the low of traffic.

All very clever and works very well but you do pay £50 per year for the service. TMC of course is free and to be fair works very well.
 
As above they are completely different things.

TMC is a free service delivered over FM radio that relies (AFAIK) on operators being notified of problems and manually typing in the details.

HD Traffic is a subscription service (you basically have a SIM card in your unit) based on automated tracking of handsets on the Vodafone (?) network to get current average speed on any given road.

Additionally TomTom has a database of historical traffic speeds for roads by day of week and hour of day ("IQ Routes") which it uses in route planning. I.e. in the rush hour it will send you a different way to a Sunday morning, regardless of traffic incidents.

I have to be honest and say I haven't used any of the above, but I've looked into it quite carefully and HD Traffic is meant to be pretty good. I did have the original TomTom Traffic subscription service that used your own phone (via Bluetooth) to receive GPRS data. But the quality was hit and miss ... too often I found myself sitting in a jam it didn't know anything about, or travelling on a clear road which was meant to be stationary.
 
One of the problems with TMC is that during updates, they take down the previous message and then upload the new one. This can confuse the satnav (including COMAND) causing it to reroute thinking the road ahead is now clear, when the new message comes up it then wants to divert you. Unfortunately depending on where you are, you may have just missed the motorway exit that you should have taken. Can be a pain in truly 'dynamic' traffic conditions.
Just goes to prove you still need to be aware of what's going on!

Still love my COMAND though - the NTG 4.5 is awesome, and very rarely gets it wrong.
 
Tom Tom HD Traffic is very good and far more impressive than TMC. It rarely gets caught out.
 

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