Crazy Route

[gerapau]

I am planning a trip this summer and though I have taken the road many, many times and definately don't need a GPS I decided to test out my new GO 720 and see what route it gave me for the trip. I will be leaving Ottawa, Ontario Canada and going to New Richmond, Quebec, Canada. When I put in these points the route it gives me is a bit crazy. For some reason I leave Ottawa and go through Montreal and Quebec (which is good) but then the route turns south and goes way down through Maine instead of continuing east. The trip ends up being about 1400 kilometers instead of just over 1000 when you take the right route (maybe the Maine board of tourism sponsors TomTom and is routing people through there ;-).

The funny thing is that if I tell the TomTom that I am starting in Montreal it does give me the right route but when it starts in Ottawa the route is crazy even though it does start off right by going through Montreal. Anyone else have any other routes that are completely wrong like this?

 

[jimmyt5]

Did you ask for fastest or shortest? Makes a big deference

 

[gerapau]

In this case it doesn't matter. The route that it gives me is neither the fastest or the shortest (by a long ways). You can test it out on TomToms route planning website (TomTom Route Planner - get the most accurate, up-to-date routes) to see what I mean. As I mentioned, if I depart from Montreal everything is fine. But if I depart from Ottawa it really screws things up even though the first part of the route actually goes through Montreal. The route that it suggests actually adds about 400 kilometers (about 250 miles) and probably 4+ hours to the journey.

 

[dhn]

If you have application 8.302 and the maps 8.15 or higher, then you will get different routing because of IQ2 which takes into consideration the time of day, not just the day of week. IQ2 only works for fastest routing, not shortest.

That may be coming into play here.

 

[gerapau]

As I mentioned, IQ2 shouldn't make a difference. Even if it did, the part of this route that is affected (east of Quebec City) never has bad traffic (unless there is a storm in the winter). That, plus the fact that, as I mentioned, the route it gives me goes through Montreal and Quebec and then heads south through Maine yet if I use Montreal or Quebec as the starting point the route it takes is very different. I am not sure what routing logic would tell me to take route A if I am going from Quebec to New Richmond yet I should take a much longer route (that goes through Quebec) if I leave from Ottawa. It doen't make sense.

 

[dhn]

Have you tried 'shortest' from both starting points and compared the routes selected?

And IQ2 WILL have an affect if you pick 'fastest'.

 

[mvl]

This is a definitely a tomtom routing bug - you may want to call tech support and report it.

If you route directly, it takes 14 hours. If you choose "Find alternative" and "travel via" Quebec, it takes 10 hours. (720/app 8.302/map 825)

I've seen this bug in long routes, where a "travel via" hint resulted in a way that was 5-10 minutes faster, but not one that was 4 hours faster.

To save route calculation time, most navigation engines use a few shortcuts and miss some slightly faster roads, but such a huge miss is probably a software defect.

Again, try escalating to tomtom support, hopefully you can get a trouble ticket opened for a developer to check into the bug.

 

[gerapau]

I am not saying that IQ2 doesn't make a difference. I believe that it is what is making the difference here. I just think that something is wrong with it's algorithm in this case. The problem is that the part of the route that it is adjusting is a part where traffic is very, very rarely a problem. It is a very rural portion of the trip and traffic is rarely slow on the highway there.

On top of that, as I have already stated, the route it gives does not make sense. Let me change things a bit here. If I plan a trip from Ottawa to Quebec it gives me a route that is 465km long. This is good. Now, if I try to plan a trip from Quebec, QC to New Richmond, QC it gives me a route that is 598km long. This is also good. Now if I plan a trip from Ottawa to New Richmond and the route it gives me goes through Quebec shouldn't the best route be the addition of the two individual routes above? I would think so but instead it is giving me a route that is almost 400km longer (yet it does go through Quebec). It does not make sense.

Maybe the IQ2 database has some really bad data for that part of the roads but it would have to be very bad for the extra 400km to make sense and like I said, to me this is impossible because those roads are almost never busy (save for some bad winter storms).

 

[gerapau]

I didn't see your response before posting mvl. I was responding to dhn. I have already submitted a bug report to Tomtom support. Let's see what they say.

 

[RobertB]

The map could have bad road types picked on some key portions of the route, and if they haven't gotten enough corrections submitted, it'll just stay wrong.

I've noticed that the maps in Southeast Arkansas are ridiculously off. The maps show sharp bends in the roads that aren't there at all, to the point where you are instructed to "Turn Left" when the road is actually straight. That adds minutes to the routing, and it doesn't take long before they add up.

Here's an example, if it works. AR 298 north of Lake Ouachita is a winding mountain road, but it certainly doesn't require you to "Turn Left" here (hit "Show Driving Directions" and click the second "Turn left"). If you look, there's another bogus "notch" in the road about 500 feet to the east -- not enough to make the unit call for a turn, but maybe enough to slow down the route's speed.

I reported 30+ instances of this to TomTom after an Easter weekend trip to the Ouachitas, but I know I missed at least as many more.

 

[gerapau]

Robert, I don't think that it has any bad road types here. As mvl mentioned, if I route directly between Ottawa and New Richmond it gives me a route that it estimates will take over 14 hours (but does go through Quebec city) and is 1400km. If however I select "find alternative" and tell it to "travel via" Quebec City (which it is already doing in the direct route) for some reason it alters the route and now estimates it to take over 4 hours less and 400km less than the direct route. If it had bad road types then I would expect the second "travel via" example would take the same route as the direct route but it doesn't.

 

[Bama Rambler]

Don't rule out bad road type etc. When you select "find alternate route" it completely ignores the original route so even if it classed the second road as a dirt road it still wouldn't take the first route.

 

[gerapau]

I received the following reply from Tomtom. I am not sure how I would use Map Share to fix this. I have sent them a response because I don't think this is something that should be fixed using Map Share. To me it is a bug in their routing algorithm.

Dear Paul,

Thank you for taking the time to contact TomTom Customer Support regarding the routing being off on your GO 720. My name is Cassie and we are always happy to help.

There are occasionally errors within the map. When this occurs we recommend that you utilize the Map Corrections feature on the device. For assistance with this I have attached the Map Share Manual. We apologize for the inconvenience and any frustration this may cause.

Thank you for choosing TomTom for your navigation needs. If you have any further questions or comments, please email or call us at 866-486-6866 Monday through Friday, 8:30 AM until 7:00 PM EST or Saturday, 9:00 AM until 6:00 PM EST. Thanks again for writing. At TomTom we believe in showing you the way the easy way.

 

[mvl]

Call up tomtom.

In my experience, the phone reps will work with you until the problem is resolved.

The email reps will find the most appropriate knowledge base article and just respond to you with it. Email support (to me) offers nothing more than you could find on your own via a tomtom support web search.

 

[mvl]

Also, in reality I doubt this issue will impact you.

Tomtom appears to route the first few hours of the trip pretty well. IQroutes will recalculate whenever you take a break of more than 5 minutes, so I suspect after you stop for lunch or gas a few hours into the trip, Tomtom will recalculate the proper route.

 

[RobertB]

Also, in reality I doubt this issue will impact you.

Tomtom appears to route the first few hours of the trip pretty well. IQroutes will recalculate whenever you take a break of more than 5 minutes, so I suspect after you stop for lunch or gas a few hours into the trip, Tomtom will recalculate the proper route.

That would be easy enough to test, actually. Just plan your route with a progressively closer and closer destination, until the route suddenly flips over to the "right" one. If there's a road somewhere in your path that is listed incorrectly (one way the wrong way, dirt, requires U-turn, toll, no left turn, whatever), then you might be able to nail it down.

(That might also be more trouble than it's worth...)

 

[mvl]

That would be easy enough to test, actually. Just plan your route with a progressively closer and closer destination, until the route suddenly flips over to the "right" one. If there's a road somewhere in your path that is listed incorrectly (one way the wrong way, dirt, requires U-turn, toll, no left turn, whatever), then you might be able to nail it down.

(That might also be more trouble than it's worth...)

I normally like doing this kind of mapshare debugging which is why I looked into this analysis.

I don't think it's a mapshare issue here. Quebec is a waypoint before the diversion (but closer than the original starting point). It is on the original route, so I wasn't forcing a different path to be chosen. The fact that a waypoint fixes the tomtom-displayed timing means that tomtom should know one path is shorter than the other.

Here's what I suspect is happening - Tomtom pre-IQ routing used to be done via road class. Bigger roads were driven faster than smaller ones. In long routes, trying every permutation of routes takes very very long, so tomtom probably ignores smaller class roads in the middle of the route to speed things up. The problem is that IQ feeds tomtom very different info - a small class road may be a very fast one (eg a narrow 50mph highway, vs a huge city boulevard with stop lights). There's probably a Canadian highway north of Maine that IQ routes knows is fast, but it's probably classed as a small route and skipped in the "long trip" routing algorithm. I bet the bug is that when IQ routes is enabled, the "road skipping" engine has to also look at IQ speed - I bet it's only looking at road class.

Again, it takes some way of channeling this example and explanation past tomtom support into a tomtom developer to adequately get this researched.

 

[gerapau]

So here is the latest response that I got. I didn't know I could use Map Share quite like that. I will try it and see what happens. I have my doubts that I will ever hear anything back by doing it this way though.

Thank you for taking the time to update the incident.

As previously stated, the Map Share feature will allow you to report this error to us. We recommend that the 'Report Other' options be used. Once you are on this page, the error will be able to be explained. Once this has been done we will be able to further look into the issue for a possible resolution. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience and any frustration this may cause.

Thank you for choosing TomTom for your navigation needs. If you have any further questions or comments, please email or call us at 866-486-6866 Monday through Friday, 8:30 AM until 5:30 PM EST or Saturday, 9:00 AM until 6:00 PM EST. Thanks again for writing. At TomTom we believe in showing you the way the easy way.

 

[mvl]

Mapshare will get even less of a response than email. Again, I suggest you call them.

With mapshare, your edit will be lost in a sea of other "text-based" requests. If a lot of people report an edit in an area, they'll look into it. With this type of error I doubt your specific location is going to overlap with other tomtom users.

 

[jsup]

I have also ran into a bizaar routing issue. I was a long time Garmin user and needed a new GPS & came across a 2 day sale @ Radio Shack for a TomTom Go630 for $199. After looking at the features, it appeared as a great value and I decided to pick it up and give it a try.

Here we go...so I've been driving from Buffalo to St. Pete Beach every year for the past 3 years and have a general idea of the route I'm going. I put the destination in the TomTom Route Planner and for some reason, 1/2 way through the trip, it decides to keep me on Rte 79 into Charleston going west and then puts me on Rte 64 leaving Charleston going south east. Mind you, 64+/- miles before you reach Charleston every other mapping software I checked has you get off & take CR19 south, avoiding Charleston all together saving over 130+/- mi & 2hrs drive time!! If I start from Pittsburg it plans the same route yet if I start from Morgantown WV, it has me take the CR19, avoiding Charleston. So when I use the GPS to route this, it early on takes me through Ohio and then south when I've always (and all other software) takes me to Erie PA then proceeding saving time & miles. So using these TomTom applications, and depending on where and If you make a stop, you will get a different route each time? The big problem is, which one is correct and when driving across country, that can be important. All routes get me to where I need to go but if I can save time & money that's a plus for me.

Any input would be greatly appreciated because while I do enjoy what this GPS has to offer, the routing is a bit screwy.

p.s. has anyone else noticed that 80% of the destinations, once arriving, are off by sometimes 300+ft. This has me, as a Real Estate Appraiser, a bit annoyed but something I can get used to. Is there a fix update or is this the norm for TomTom? I'm trying to find reasons to stick with TomTom as my first impressions of the unit were high but it seems the more and more I dive into it, the more & more questions/concearns I have. Garmins are more pricey for the same features but if the routing/address locations are more correct/reliable, this may have to go back.:

Thanks in advance.