Seeing color-coded maps based on traffic congestion?

[Krellan]

Is there currently a way to do this on the TomTom GO 930, or is this a "wishlist feature"?

I'd love to see color-coded maps, based on current traffic congestion. The freeways would have the standard green/yellow/red/black color coding, indicating increasing levels of congestion.

You can see this on Google Maps, by enabling "Traffic" while viewing maps of a big city, or on dedicated sites like this:

http://beta.sigalert.com/Map.asp?region=San+Francisco

So, my question is, can this also be done on the TomTom? I tried using the menu options to view maps of traffic congestion, but it just colored the roads in yellow and didn't provide any extra options when I tried to click on the map.

Thanks!

Josh

 

[canderson]

Is there currently a way to do this on the TomTom GO 930, or is this a "wishlist feature"?

I'd love to see color-coded maps, based on current traffic congestion. The freeways would have the standard green/yellow/red/black color coding, indicating increasing levels of congestion.

You can see this on Google Maps, by enabling "Traffic" while viewing maps of a big city, or on dedicated sites like this:

http://beta.sigalert.com/Map.asp?region=San+Francisco

So, my question is, can this also be done on the TomTom? I tried using the menu options to view maps of traffic congestion, but it just colored the roads in yellow and didn't provide any extra options when I tried to click on the map.

Thanks!

Josh

My traffic subscription (over cell) causes mine to show roads colored based upon traffic conditions. Green = less than top, but good, Yellow = slowing, Red = slow, Gray = forget it. Each shows a regular series of white arrows going your way if it's something on your route.

 

[Krellan]

My traffic subscription (over cell) causes mine to show roads colored based upon traffic conditions. Green = less than top, but good, Yellow = slowing, Red = slow, Gray = forget it. Each shows a regular series of white arrows going your way if it's something on your route.

Interesting. How do you bring up the colored roads? Is there a way to view a zoomed-out map of the entire region and see traffic levels on all the freeways there? Maybe I'm missing the option in the menus.

 

[Krellan]

I eventually got it to work, and it appears on the overview maps, as well as drawing little triangles on roads that I'm currently driving on that have heavy traffic.

The little vertical "thermometer" for the traffic readout is not as useful as it could be, though. Heavy traffic is shown as an incident, when a better approach would be to color-code the thermometer itself. Right now, it's always white. It would be great if the thermometer could get the green-yellow-red coloring that the roads get. Then, at a glance you would see your route ahead, and what traffic congestion you have to look forward to.

 

[canderson]

I eventually got it to work, and it appears on the overview maps, as well as drawing little triangles on roads that I'm currently driving on that have heavy traffic.

The little vertical "thermometer" for the traffic readout is not as useful as it could be, though. Heavy traffic is shown as an incident, when a better approach would be to color-code the thermometer itself. Right now, it's always white. It would be great if the thermometer could get the green-yellow-red coloring that the roads get. Then, at a glance you would see your route ahead, and what traffic congestion you have to look forward to.

Sorry - looks like I missed your subsequent reply and further post. Glad your colors are showing up now.

The "thermometer" is tough, especially as it attempts to represent conditions along an entire route which may be quite long. If needed, it practically stacks the notification icons on top of one another. I've had better luck paging into the menu and doing the "traffic on route" thing. That brings up each situation one at a time. Then again, I probably become a hazard myself as I'm trying to page through each incident to see what's coming ahead. Safe enough when at a dead stop in traffic, though

 

[GAW]

My first experience with traffic was in a rental car in Germany 4 yars ago. In 2D mode, it displayed the colored sections on the route and also verbally alerted you up to 100 km ahead of the situation and of course offered alternate routes.

TomTom's system is as you said very awkward, and as you page through each situation, it is often hard to see exactly where it is along the route,

It would be really good if TomTom would set up their traffic to view the same way as these other devices in 2D mode, and also let you be able to zoom in and out and not have it automatically reset itself to the default zoom after a few seconds.