TomTom XL, not providing suitable alternate routes

[kcljj]

The other day I was driving along the M1 when there was a huge tailback. I remembered that if I turned off at the next junction I could snake my way round the country roads to my destination, however, I could not remember the way. Therefore thinking that the XL would give me an alternate route, I got off the next junction. To my dismay, the XL kept on telling me to turn around and go back onto the M1. My first TomTom One would never do that. The XL is really smart but it seems to be quite dumb in this case. So the question is, is the anyway to tweek the settings so that it does not keep referring me back to the same route? Or would I have to stop and recalculate? Many thanks!

 

[dhn]

Is there not a setting to automatically recalculate a different route in case of traffic? Look under planning preferences.

 

[kcljj]

My subscription to traffic has long passed. As for the menus, I have been through all of them and haven't been able to find the automatically recalculate.

 

[dhn]

Does your model have the 'EasyMenu'?? If so, that may explain that option's not being available.

 

[canderson]

My subscription to traffic has long passed. As for the menus, I have been through all of them and haven't been able to find the automatically recalculate.

Since you do not have a traffic subscription, what you are seeing is expected.

When you turn off the M road, your TomTom immediately tries to project the fastest route based upon your current position. Knowing nothing of the traffic problem, the assumption is that putting you back on the M road you have just left is the quicker of the alternatives, and under normal (perhaps a bad definition of "normal" on the M1!) circumstances, that would be the case. Quicker to turn around and jump back on vs. some alternate surface roads.

The only way to override that cleanly is to (and I'm guessing a bit on your menu structure - don't know XL that well):

Main Menu > Find Alternative > Avoid part of route > [deselect all of the M1 segments from list that you don't like]

It will then recalculate a route that avoids the M1.

 

[kcljj]

Thanks for all the feedback! It seems that what canderson says is logical. However, I am just confused why my 1st edition TomTom One was able to recalculate route without prompting even though I didn't have traffic for that. Anyways, thanks for the information!

 

[canderson]

Funny how "better" isn't always "better". Your new unit has IQRoutes and will slice and dice average speed by day of the week and time of day. When you deviated from the planned route, your unit took "typical" traffic on all of the options into consideration, and decided that you were better off back where you were. Of course, without traffic or incident information, it has no way to know if that's a bad plan or not.

Even with Live traffic, I've had situations occur where things clearly went south (sounds strange, in this context) on a major divided highway (dual carriageway, to you folks) only a short time before, and the traffic data hadn't caught up with it yet. In those cases, if there's still one or more exits ahead of me before what appears to be the source of the malfunction, I'll do a quick "Find Alternative" and deselect any of the route that appears to be the part of the problem and let it chew on that. If it deselects too much, that's OK. Once I think I'm clear of the obstruction, I'll just do another Navigate To my original destination and let it pull me back up off the surface streets to the highway again.