Smartlink traffic

I'm not sure about reporting detail differences between Canada and the US but in the relatively rural area of the US where I'm located, Smartlink traffic is the most complete. The Garmin traffic receivers provide minimal coverage in my area.

I also use Waze on my smartphone to supplement traffic reporting. You also get reports on police activity and road hazard warnings as well.

Here in the SF Bay area, the details traffic information provided by the Smartphone link and the HD Traffic Receiver is about the same. They are both quite accurate for the highways, especially at commute hours. The accuracy for the major local thoroughfares, however, is hit and miss, mostly miss.

The information presented by the latest User interface of the Smartphone and the traffic receivers leaves much to be desired, however. The delays are shown only in the map view and not in the list view. The list view shows only the "incidents", traffic accidents, road closures, etc. In the earlier UI, the delays in minutes are shown in the list view. You can scroll through it to do a survey of the traffic conditions. I guess the geniuses of the Garmin UI team decided to hide them for us layman users.

The information on delays in minutes are there. There will pop up when you are approaching the congestion. They are also indicted qualitatively by color codes in the map views. Not the most satisfactory way for me, I will say.