TT Live traffic vs Google traffic

[leggy]

I live in LA, CA so having advanced traffic alert is a must. I am currently relying on my Google traffic and using it to avoid traffic in my daily commute however, Google navigation is a joke compared to TT.

I was wondering which one is more accurate and provides faster traffix update (not from the tower to the device but from the incident - servers - tower - device), TT Live or Google's traffic?

 

[canderson]

Don't know if anyone here has tried a side-by-side comparo on those two. If you have the time, you can use this Live Traffic in one pane and compare to what you're seeing on Google.

Be advised that in July, Google dropped their ETA (estimated time of arrival) feature from traffic - probably because it was rarely anywhere near accurate enough to be useful. It's one thing to know 'where' and 'what', but just as important to know 'how bad'. Rumor has it that they're trying to come up with something that actually works in this regard, but I haven't heard anything about a target date for releasing something new.

 

[mvl]

Google is known to have more realtime data inputs (all Verizon cellphones + all Android phones), vs Tomtom which uses Tomtom LIVE devices, Tomtom iphone apps, and other 3rd party sources..

However, Tomtom has much better historical roadspeed information (a 5-year database of time-of-day Tomtom history). And Tomtom has 3 years of experience with tuning and improving its traffic algorithms (Tomtom is on a 5th generation product now)

I tried Google's service, and it properly avoided realtime congestion on large sidestreets, but put me on even slower small sidestreets with traffic and redlights.

In my small side-by-side, Tomtom's HD traffic ran circles around Google's service, when it came to finding the fastest route and predicting accurate ETA.

In LA, Tomtom HD traffic was 99% perfect in my travels. It picked up every jam, and even had separate traffic speeds for carpool lanes vs regular lanes.

My personal experience with traffic is that Google's service is about 60% as good as Tomtom's, and every other service in the USA is about 20% as good as Tomtom.

Of course, in smaller less congested areas, there may be only one way to go from point a to point b, so the difference in quality may be less perceptible.

 

[leggy]

Thank you Canderson and MVL.

I do realize that Google's navigation is very basic and it does very poor job in routing (I am talking about Google navigation using Android phone). Google does not have avoidance other than highway and toll road, so whether there is a traffic jam on the route before planning the route or while driving then Goodle will not redirect you.

MVL, I do appreciate the feedback on the comparison and I understand from your comparison that both Google and TT's Live receive the update at the same speed but Google has more input (quantity) than TT. If that is the case then that should be fair enough to replace Google's traffic with TT's Live.

I am still using my XL340 when going to new places and using Google's traffic to avoid the roads manually.

 

[canderson]

Much depends upon "which" TomTom traffic we're talking about, too. Their RDS-TMC traffic is OK, but their Live traffic is really starting to come around. Incidents are being reported in a far more timely basis around here .. to the point where it's actually right more often than not, and replanning automatically certainly works well now that the information is coming in reliably.

When mvl talks about "HD" traffic, that's the Live version. What you didn't tell us was whether your XL340 was a "Live" model or not. Makes a HUGE difference.

 

[leggy]

Canderson,

I am talking about HD Live that comes with GO2535m Live and I believe that MVL is talking about the same thing. The XL340 I have does not have traffic. I have tried the XXL540TM but returned it because of the delayed traffic update, which was useless.