How accurate do YOU find the traffic information?

For the most parts it all comes down to:
1) How quickly it get reported to the authorities
2) How quickly the authorities report it to traffic service
3) How quickly the traffic service gets the report into the system
4) Where you are in reference to said traffic incident

Not necessarily in that order.

Cleveland,OH
Timely and accurate 24 hour a day reporting
I prefer Clear channel service over NAVTEQ for FM reception, it appears I get better radio coverage with clear channel but reporting is the same for either.

It depends on the city your in, and how serious all the above are to get people and radio stations informed. I would think the bigger the market the better the service, since Clear channel owns most radio stations in the United States, it's to their benefit to keep the stations and listeners up to date with traffic reports thus The traffic system updates.
Methods of gathering traffic data in different areas.
DoT and Proprietary Traffic Cameras, DoT Speed Sensors, Airborne/Mobile Spotter Vehicles, Digital Scanners that cover many local emergency services, Police Callouts, and Radio station “Tip Lines”. The local operations center staff then use their resources to locate and verify the traffic data before entering it into the system.

Traffic updates are slow and probably sent late so that by the time you are in that area you are either stuck in traffic or through it.

So how does NAVTEQ or whoever receive the traffic updates in the first place? I suppose it's possible for emergency services to notify them of accidents and such, but what about general traffic congestion?

In Tucson the Navteq traffic is far better and more comprehensive than Clear Channel. Clear Channel here is mainly a couple of road construction items and that's about it. They have about a equal number of FM stations here.

Just picking upon this thread and havent played with it much, my 265WT on a few trips thus far, the traffic part has been woefully inaccurate - warning for non-existent traffic then missing the major clusters that lasted hours (1/2/10 I95 in basically the whole state of GA, 1/11/10 I-77 in Charlote, NC). Do Clearchannel and Navteq use the same data and implement at the same time?

City: Seattle, WA

My Garmin Nuvi 1250T uses FM traffic. The Garmin seems to be slow at re-routing when it sees traffic.

I have better results with this process for determining the fastest route:
1) Turn the Garmin on
2) Select the destination (e.g. Home)
3) Wait 5 minutes
4) Stop the current destination
5) Select the same destination again

My experience shows that the Garmin takes about 2-5 minutes to obtain traffic information. The above process seems to result in a final route that is better and different than the inital route.

The ClearChannel traffic data has always been good. My problem was with intermittent reception in certain areas with a weak FM signal. This is for the Long Island and New York City area. One evening I was southbound on I-87 entering New York City, an area with many FM stations for traffic. I was in the left lane going 70, and Jill says, "Traffic alert! Road closed 2 miles ahead." In 30 seconds I was in a panic stop as traffic backed up. That warning probably saved me from a rear-end collision.

dobs108

Came into Toronto via plane tonight around 5:30pm rush hour, with a ~20 minute drive to Mississauga. The free traffic on my 1490T was accurate indicating a 5 minute delay due to heavy traffic.

I have 765t and the built in traffic is TERRIBLE. I use it in NY state. It's completely inaccurate. I will appreciate if someone can provide instruction for: Do not re-route if delay < 20 minutes.

I would agree with you on this. Seldom have I gotten any accurate traffic information from my 1490T (Navteq).

Last week, in Cleveland, I was stuck on a highway for 30 minutes with a truck jack-knifed across the road miles ahead. My Garmin traffic icon was green the entire time, even while the local AM radio station traffic reporters were talking about the the traffic jam.

On occasion, the Red traffic icon will appear and the Garmin will re-route me. Most of the time, I just ignore it and travel my usual route without problems. So either there was NEVER a traffic issue, or the issue had cleared and NavTeq failed to show it had.

In central FL the Fm traffic is not bad.Not 100% all the time but I would like to think with this new technology it will improve over time.

I wish I could agree with you Charlie. I am not very optimistic about the future of the FM traffic service. It is expensive to provide and I don't see a good busines model for generating revenue to support it. If there was, I don't think Microsoft would be pulling out. I suspect the WiFi and cellular services will take over.

1) Phx , AZ
2) no way is it timely or accurate
3) doesn't matter what road
4) It seems that here when the alert goes off the delay is gone and when there should be an alert there is not alert. I think it was a waist of money for the traffic

Where are WiFi and cellular going to get the content? ClearChannel already owns a number of FM stations where they provide on-the-air traffic, and it has to be extensive and accurate or the listeners are instantly going to tune in to the competition. I am talking about the New York City area from New Jersey through New York State, and into Long Island and Connecticut where heavy traffic happens every day. The number of alternate routes is staggering. They put the traffic info into their digital FM signal for the GPS/FM traffic receiver. Technically, WiFi and cellular are better, but Clearchannel isn't going to sell them their content, at least not now.

dobs108

I ran with MSN for a trial 3 months. I found that the biggest flaw in the traffic reports..and I expect this is the same no matter the service provider...is the lack of complete data.

For instance traffic is heavy or blocked on the freeway...Garmin reroutes into an area where there is NO data...not necessarily no traffic just no data. The assumption must be that it is better off the freeway, but this is not always so. I think this will always limit the usefulnes of these traffic services. Every road needs to have data or the rerouting is going to be based on the anywhere but here approach.

I experienced this sort of rerouting many times, when AM radio traffic reports were talking about sheer gridlock in downtown Seattle, the MSN traffic was constantly suggesting exiting to downtown to get off the jammed freeway....if I had followed that advice I would likely still be trapped out there.

Until these services are comprehensive they are just guessing that somewhere else must be better than where data is available.

Another example is completely temporally defective data. For 3 months I drove home in a construction zone. Traffic was very heavy there during normal rush hour traffic...but I drove home at 9pm. Still I got the sever traffic warnings suggesting deviating on much longer routes...at 9pm there was never any reason to reroute...just stale data from earlier in the day. The construction zone was put in place but the actual data to support the rerouting was either stale or just coded to be "red" all the time. Idiotic.

I would not rely on its accuracy.

Once in a while its on the money but more often its not. I just ignore the traffic screen on my 760 when it pops up and shows yellow with delays and traffic is light and moving along, which seems to happen a lot.

In my opinion, it's mostly useless here in Oregon even on the major freeway.

Service is accurate and timely. But as someone mentioned above, it also depends on how quickly accidents, etc are reported to authorities.