Cannot "find" street names unless exact?

[cac313]

Greetings,

TomTom noob here but not new to GPS units.

I won a TT1, 3rd ed at a company party (yay!) and gave it to my wife so I would get less of those "where am I? How do I get to where I need to be?" calls. I was pretty sure the TT would do the trick. She really liked the Nav system I had in my Acura (which I no longer have, "sigh").

Anyway, she wanted to find a particular crossroad on the other side of town (Tucson, AZ) but could NOT get it to find the them. The roads she was searching for are well known, major arteries. We've lived here most our lives but she is not as familiar with that side of town and just wanted to know the fastest way to get there.

When I got home, she showed me what she was doing. I must admit, I find it to be a flaw in the system as I could reproduce the same results.

She wanted the intersection of ORANGE GROVE RD and LA CHOLLA. She went to Navigate To;Address;Crossroads and typed in ORANGE GROVE. It didn't find anything. She tried the same with LA CHOLLA, same result. I tried doing it with a more inclusive search and I discovered that (in Tucson at least) it would only show it if you put in "W ORANGE GROVE RD and "N LA CHOLLA".

How does that make sense? Shouldn't the system be flexible enough to look for any location where those two road names meet? Why should you have to KNOW north, west ,east or south? What would happen if you didn't know the town at all? You'd NEVER find it. My Acura system did not have this problem.

Your advice, suggestion or commiserations will be appreciated!

Craig

 

[Birdman]

Greetings,

TomTom noob here but not new to GPS units.

I won a TT1, 3rd ed at a company party (yay!) and gave it to my wife so I would get less of those "where am I? How do I get to where I need to be?" calls. I was pretty sure the TT would do the trick. She really liked the Nav system I had in my Acura (which I no longer have, "sigh").

Anyway, she wanted to find a particular crossroad on the other side of town (Tucson, AZ) but could NOT get it to find the them. The roads she was searching for are well known, major arteries. We've lived here most our lives but she is not as familiar with that side of town and just wanted to know the fastest way to get there.

When I got home, she showed me what she was doing. I must admit, I find it to be a flaw in the system as I could reproduce the same results.

She wanted the intersection of ORANGE GROVE RD and LA CHOLLA. She went to Navigate To;Address;Crossroads and typed in ORANGE GROVE. It didn't find anything. She tried the same with LA CHOLLA, same result. I tried doing it with a more inclusive search and I discovered that (in Tucson at least) it would only show it if you put in "W ORANGE GROVE RD and "N LA CHOLLA".

How does that make sense? Shouldn't the system be flexible enough to look for any location where those two road names meet? Why should you have to KNOW north, west ,east or south? What would happen if you didn't know the town at all? You'd NEVER find it. My Acura system did not have this problem.

Your advice, suggestion or commiserations will be appreciated!

Craig

Unfortunately, I don't have any other suggestion for you. I, too, consider that a shortcoming of the programming of the unit. Apparently the TomTom Searching forces you to look for the first letter in the complete name of the road (for example, if you typed in "N" I'll bet N LA CHOLLA would show up in the list - but, as you state, if you didn't know the area....)

I suggest you contact TomTom customer support and note this flaw. Perhaps they may not even know about this shortcoming or may have suggestions as to another search method. I would be very curious to hear their response.

 

[46jimbo]

Since she knows where this intersection is located, she could have navigated to 'Point on map' - just zoom in and place the cursor on the intersection.

This only works, of course, if you are familiar with the area.

Just an additional note: sometimes you can't find the street because you have named the wrong city. When in the suburbs, the TomTom may have the street listed under a different name than you thought. Often, very long streets cross thru more than one municipality.

 

[Locotuss]

Important -- the street name is W La Cholla, the "w" is part of the name, not just the direction it runs, so the search is looking for the Alpha, not part of the name, the same as if you just put Cholla, it isn't going to find it, in a old fashion map book you would have to look for it the same way, starting with "W" in the index.

 

[cac313]

Important -- the street name is W La Cholla, the "w" is part of the name, not just the direction it runs

First of all let me say thanks for all the responses. I really appreciate the feedback.

Secondly, the above quote is not true, it IS called La Cholla regardless of what part of town it's in, the only reason it would be considered W or E is depending on what side of the Median Street that is the demarcation of the west/east split (in our case Stone Ave).

I guess I'll take it up with TomTom support and see if they have any suggestions.

thanks again.

CC

 

[Locotuss]

OK, MY BAD, in my community the "N, S,E,W," go with several streets as part of the name and tomtom uses them that way, I made an Assumption based on how you entered it into tomtom because it wants the correct name, not possible name, ALSO, it appears as if GOOGLE maps lists the streets North and West streets, MAPQUEST also list it that way, weird huh! I'm not from Tucson, but have a job where I use map books on a daily basis. So Some where these map companies and tomtom are getting the information that these streets must be N and W streets as part of their names. SO I feel the above quote is real,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Oh well, no need to bicker on this.

 

[46jimbo]

If you go to Google Maps and look for La Cholla Blvd. in Tuscon, it wants you to indicate if you want N, S, etc. So it appears that Google agrees with TomTom.

 

[Smokiewolf]

Whenever I don't get what I'm looking for from my Tom Tom, I go to Google maps and cross check information. As a last resort, you can get coordinates and then look at then browse the map to get street names, as was suggested previously