720 has a mind of its own

[momcat1]

I'll try to describe this in the most uncomplicated way I can. This has happened to me twice now, and I don't know how to stop it.

We live in the Hudson Valley, NY. My daughter lives in NYC. She keeps moving to different boroughs and I'm not too good with remembering how to get there anyway. I'm fine til about Yonkers then I get messed up. That's why I use a TomTom. (No snyde comments here, guys). OK, so every mapping service I have used, TT included just loves to route through the Taconic Parkway. A nice, scenic drive, as long as it is sunny and dry. At night it's one big deer alley. I don't ever want to go that way. I have found that if I tell TT to avoid the Taconic AND travel via Route 6-84, the trip down usually gets plotted correctly. It's coming home that appears to be a problem. I tell it the same, avoid the Taconic AND travel via Route 6-84, and all the way home it keeps telling me at each exit off 6-84, to get off and follow a new instruction. I've zoomed out a few times to see what it's doing. It's trying to re-route me off of 6-84 and ONTO the Taconic!. As I continue on 6-84 further it has me getting off Northbound, looping back down 6-84 Southbound to get to another deer alley to send me over to the Taconic. By the time I'm home it nows says I have 100 or so miles to travel to my destination.

I know not all of you live in my area, but I'm wondering if you've ever seen such bizarre behavior, for a route you've planned. The same thing has happened for three different boroughs she's lived in.

I will also tell you that I've also used my TT to travel to and from Virginia, Florida and Massachusetts, with preferred routing, and it's only coming home from NYC that I've seen this.

Oh, and this last time, I could have sworn that if I set up and saved the route, that when it was time to come home I could pick this route and just reverse it. But nowhere in the menus could I find that option. Was I mistaken?

 

[canderson]

Starting from the end and working backwards ... There's no route auto-reverse. I remember there being some sort of 3rd party application for this a while back, but it wasn't native to the unit.

As for the Taconic ... geez, what a piece of road. Lanes designed for the horse and buggy era. Much of the road from Fishkill south a rock wall on one side and a thin railing sort of affair dividing the "highway" on the other. I used to drive from Wappinger Falls to Valhalla and back daily. I know the route.

Would you believe I was about 3 miles south of Fishkill where the road is actually divided by a densely treed median, northbound, and some guy was coming toward me in the left lane?!?" I blinked lights like crazy, he stopped next to me, and I told him he was going the wrong way on a divided highway. I got the heck out of there before I got rear-ended from something coming up behind. Hope to heck he got turned around before he got killed. Must have screwed up somewhere at the I-84 interchange and managed to survive the 3 miles southbound without hitting anyone.

ANYWAY... back to the topic at hand ...

I've seen my own TomTom hammer me about routing that didn't make sense to me. And once it got hold of the idea, it wouldn't let go. There are a couple of things at play here. First, your TomTom can be easily set up to work with either shortest or fastest routing. Your preferred routing that avoids the Taconic is neither. So we know why the routing home starts out that way. But at times, I have the same problem you do when I try to recalculate a new route that avoids part of the existing route. It simply doesn't let go. One thing I've found is that once I've started out with my own plan, asking it to navigate to my destination again causes it to reconsider the whole affair. However, in your case, I don't think it'll do that. It's using what it thinks is the sensible approach even when you're over on 684.

The solution is to set up an "itinerary". You'll set up two of them -- one for coming, and one for going. You have up to 44 (or is it 48?) points you can select per itinerary. What you will want to do is select a series of points right in the middle of the correct lane of the highways that you prefer and tell your TomTom to execute the itinerary. By doing this, the TomTom will stay with your plan, since moving all the way over to the Taconic and back a couple of dozen times won't look like an efficient approach to the routing software.

Starting, for example, at your daughter's house in Yonkers, set up a waypoint for somewhere along 684 by the Westchester County airport. That will get you started in the right direction via the Cross County and the Hutch. If it messes with you and tries to send you up 87 or the Sprain, start with a waypoint out on the Hutch, then one at the airport.

Set another one at the intersection of 684 and 84. There's NO way your TomTom will run you back west to the Taconic that way.

Set the 3rd (or 4th, whichever) waypoint at your house in Hudson Valley and you'll cruise 84 all the way there.

Reverse the process for a second itinerary such that you force your TomTom to take you back to the 84/684 interesection and down past the airport on the way to your daughter's house.

It's a little clutzy, but it does work well.

 

[momcat1]

I've been setting up routes exactly as you describe, and it still doesn't work right. That is what I've been doing.

Thanks for responding anyway. It's nice to hear from someone who exactly understands the problem, and the native landscape.

You were very lucky you didn't get hit, with the wrong way driver

 

[canderson]

I've been setting up routes exactly as you describe, and it still doesn't work right. That is what I've been doing.

Thanks for responding anyway. It's nice to hear from someone who exactly understands the problem, and the native landscape.

Guess I need to back up and see what's happening. I've heard some strange routing issues, but that one takes the cake.

So you are setting up an itinerary, saving it, and when needed, loading and running the itinerary. Do I have that much right? If possible, could you show/send me a copy of the *.itn files that have been created in your itn folder on your TomTom?

 

[mvl]

I spent most of my summers in Briarcliff and Pleasantville growing up. As the new wider Taconic was being built. 9A and sawmill are much more fun drives. These day's I don't go north past Yorktown, so it stays wide the whole time for me.

My guess is that you're avoiding only part of the route.

Do a browse map after you've avoided the road (you can do a route demo from your house), and make sure the entire Taconic is pink.

 

[canderson]

...

My guess is that you're avoiding only part of the route.

Do a browse map after you've avoided the road (you can do a route demo from your house), and make sure the entire Taconic is pink.

I've had very mixed success with "avoiding" part of a route. I find that I get the kind of bounce-back that the OP mentions more often that way.

I'm going to suggest that she set up an additional few waypoints along 684 and 84 in an attempt to make the return back and forth to the Taconic look insane to the routing software.

Still hoping to see the itn file and play with it in demo mode. Perhaps I can return something good to her.

 

[mvl]

Another option is to build a "night time" map. A copy and paste with a different name (I haven't tried but apparently Michael Quinlan has gotten it to work.)

Put both on the Tomtom (you'll need an SD card). Then on the night map you could erase all of the Taconic in mapshare. And then you could switch at will via the "manage maps" option in preferences.