What value TomTom Traffic?
It’s coming up to renewal time for TomTom Traffic, and I’m wondering whether to bother.
My journey to work involves a motorway and a number of A roads. Depending on traffic, the first part of my journey (on the A6 to the motorway) can take me 20-25 minutes (6 minutes without congestion). That is a considerable delay, yet TomTom Traffic has never flagged it. Similarly, delays on the A666 are never reported.
The only delays that do get a mention are on the M61, but even then the information is next to useless: regardless of the actual amount of traffic or delay, TomTom Traffic will always report the same delay over the same fixed length of motorway i.e. between junctions. These figures are:
| Section of Road | Delay reported |
|---|---|
| M61 J5-J4 | 16 minutes |
| M61 J4-J3 | 22 minutes |
The traffic could be stationary or just slower than normal but TomTom Traffic cannot differentiate, so the reported delays have little use.
On longer journeys I’ve often been in the middle of a traffic jam before TomTom warns about it, or the location of delays or roadworks are often several miles out. Considering TomTom Traffic is supposed to use the same source as keepmoving.co.uk, the two sets of information rarely tie up.