TomTom ONE avoids some highways

[BlackSilver]

I have a TomTom ONE 125.

For the price I paid, I'm pretty happy with the unit.

But there is one annoyance, and I wonder if there's a workaround.

This past week I took a trip (130 miles or so) which I drive a lot, so took the TomTom along to get acquainted with the features on a route I already know.

If anyone wants to "work along" with me, the starting point was Plymouth, Minnesota and the destination was Clarkfield, Minnesota. A very good highway which covers a long portion of that trip is Minnesota state highway #7.

When I ask TomTom to plan the trip (fastest route) it selects US highway #212, which is an OK route, but not the fastest because it passes through many small towns at 30MPH.

If I tell TomTom to avoid US 212, it then selects US highway #12. This is a longer route, longer than US 212 and also longer than MN 7.

If I then tell TomTom to avoid US 12 it goes WAY out of it's way to a convoluted route which is hours longer.

If I then tell TomTom to go "via" a city on MN 7, it does pick up MN 7 for a short distance to go via that town (Cosmos, MN) but at first opportunity leaves MN 7 for other less desirable routes. There seems to be no way to "force" TomTom to select that road. It seems fixated on US highways over State highways.

What is causing TomTom to go to such lengths to avoid a very good road? How can I cure that?

 

[mvl]

If you zoom out on tomtom routes or (google maps) hwy 7 "disappears" which means tomtom thinks its a small (low speed limit) road. If you had a model 130, you could have edited the speed of highway 212 and slowed it down and sped up hwy 7 which maybe would have got the tomtom taking hwy 7.

If you wait for the next map (first to have mapshare input), maybe there will be enough new data that corrects the relative speeds.

 

[BlackSilver]

If you zoom out on tomtom routes or (google maps) hwy 7 "disappears" which means tomtom thinks its a small (low speed limit) road.

That's pretty crude! It should be obvious (only passes through three small towns, vs MANY small towns for the route it selects) that this is the prefereable route to that destination.

Makes me wonder what other dumb decisions it makes on routes that I'm >>not<< familiar with.

 

[Rick F.]

Have you tried 'shortest route' instead of 'fastest route'? Just a thought.

 

[BlackSilver]

Have you tried 'shortest route' instead of 'fastest route'? Just a thought.

Yes, I tried that. I takes me down gravel township roads!

In any case, Hwy 7 isn't the shortest route, but it is the fastest.

 

[mvl]

I've been playing with your specific itinerary with Iqroutes, and it makes a huge difference.

Without IQ routes, hwy 212 runs at 61 mph all the way, and hwy 7 runs at 51 mph. I suspect this is because hwy 7 is a smaller road as evidenced by its disappearing first in google map zoomout.

With IQ routes, everything seems much better. Hwy 212 runs at 60-65mph in free space, but drops to 30-40 mph in the cities. The open stretches of hwy 7 speed up to 65 mph.

The more I play with IQroutes the more amazing it becomes for me.

Funny, but it looks like the IQroute planning has a bug, though. If I plan a direct route, it takes 2hrs, 39 minutes and chooses hwy 212. If I plan a route via Cosmos MN, it takes 2hrs, 36 min and it takes hwy 7. So you're right, even tomtom says hwy 7 is faster. But something is wrong with the route planner if it couldn't find the route without the cosmos "hint".

 

[hunter3]

There might be something wrong with that particular highway, besides being small or slow. I had a problem where a large freeway in my area was never used, and rather convoluted routes were being chosen instead. Eventually, I discovered that a tiny quarter mile of the freeway was inadvertently marked as a toll road, and my TomTom had been set to avoid toll roads.