Is there an app that will automatically tell me the best route to work of three or four options, based on live traffic info? I’m trying to maximise my time lounging in bed before my commute and spending two minutes doing that rather than googling would be very nice

Not being a smartarse, but doesn’t google maps do that? Gives a few options and approx time for each.

Google Maps navigation or Waze, which is owned by Google should do what you are asking.
Questionable whether it will pick the best alternative routes though.

It flashed up an alternative route for me yesterday on the way back from Petersfield to Bristol. It saved me a MASSIVE 7 minutes!!!!! The visuals on approach to roundabouts/junctions seem to have been updated recently too.

Really rate Waze, has taken me on some magical tours of places I thought I knew well at busy times, leaving me thinking “oh yea”. Never replace local knowledge, but if you ignore it a few times on a regular route, it learns that preference and stops trying to send you another way.

OK, picture this – I just want to pick up my phone and for it to show me the best route when I look at it, it knowing that I’m likely to be off to work.

Yes, Google maps does it, but not without me turning it on, programming a route then looking at the traffic details

Edit: just saw the Waze reply. I’ll have a look

I must try using Waze a bit more. It can be handy for warnings of speed cameras too.

Right, just plugged where I have to go on Monday into Waze – to get just round the corner from me, it’s sending me on some silly circuitous route. Not a great start. 🙂

Lol at dd’s route, 119 miles!
NavFree will do that sometimes, I’ll put in a route which will take me to the top of my road, around thirty metres, then turn left, or right, but it insists I should turn right from my house, then all around the housing estate behind me, back to the road that’s thirty metres away!
Speaking of NavFree does anyone know if you can actually store routes with their individual preferences, like fastest, shortest, easiest, ignore motorways, etc? I often want a route that ignores any motorways, and it would be great if I can just save that route as is. I’m not sure that Favourites actually does this or not.

Tbf CZ, it’s a route back to Petersfield. I’m not exactly looking forward to that on Monday morning 😐 but it is telling me to start by doing, in effect, the three wrong sides of a rectangle to get around 100m from my house. 😕

DD like most sat navs, if it thinks you are headed that way, then it will take you round a small block rather that make you u-turn, but that’s why it shows you the map 🙂
Be aware though, check how long it takes in the middle of the night and you can pretty much kiss goodbye to that time come rush hour, try it again now (facing the right way down your street) and see what it says.

Look, if you have Google Now, that does exactly that with regular routes of you let it. Don’t know if it’s Android only though.

Hmmm, that should have said Pook, not Look, thanks autocorrect 🙂

From the title of the post I guessed you’re looking for the planner at cyclestreets….

Now I’ve actually read it – Don’t tomtom things do that?

deadlydarcy – Member

Right, just plugged where I have to go on Monday into Waze – to get just round the corner from me, it’s sending me on some silly circuitous route. Not a great start.

To be honest, I stopped using Waze. I thought it was going to be a real help with real time updates from other users showing you where traffic was slowing down, where accidents are etc. but in reality, it never quite worked.

Generally what would happen would be no display of any traffic at all. I’d then cruise up to the back of a tail back, enter the fact that I had hit heavy traffic into the Waze app and it would update the screen with traffic as far as the eye could see and then tell you the route you are on is stuffed.
It always seem to wait until you had confirmed that you were indeed knee deep in a 6 mile queue of traffic before telling you of the fact.

The last straw was when we went to Meadowhall for some shopping and I ignored our normal route, because the Waze app reckoned another way was quicker. We followed it and promptly ground to a halt in some massive tailbacks, only for Waze to tell us about them (again) once I pressed the button telling Waze I was in heavy traffic.

A quick nose on googlemaps / streetview shows loads of blocked off roads around there – what’s the quicker (legal) route to the motorway? The nice thing about Waze is that the map data is available and editable so easy to fix if something isn’t right.

Traffic is hard to get right but it seems better than the other systems I’ve used – TMC and the like. Generally the more people using it in an area, the better it works (because it’s getting data from people moving around the jam as well as in it) – it’s usually spot on in London. Elsewhere it may only have data from a couple of people stuck in it so all it knows is that there’s no reported issues on another road so will try to send you down there instead.

Tomtom live traffic is pretty good IMO – not sure if its available as an app though.

Apparently they take data from various places to keep it as accurate as possible, I know that they use data supplied by Vodafone that tells them how fast phones are moving etc. but not sure where else they source it.

If you use Google now and set home and work locations it’ll learn your routine and then tell you how long the commute will be each day. You can then click directly from the notification to navigation without having to enter anything else. You can set it to cycle too so that it picks the most appropriate route.

I’ve been doing that a fair bit recently and it’s working really well. The latest Google maps update is a big improvement with updates if a new route is faster because of traffic, etc.

simon_g – Member

A quick nose on googlemaps / streetview shows loads of blocked off roads around there – what’s the quicker (legal) route to the motorway? The nice thing about Waze is that the map data is available and editable so easy to fix if something isn’t right.

Traffic is hard to get right but it seems better than the other systems I’ve used – TMC and the like. Generally the more people using it in an area, the better it works (because it’s getting data from people moving around the jam as well as in it) – it’s usually spot on in London. Elsewhere it may only have data from a couple of people stuck in it so all it knows is that there’s no reported issues on another road so will try to send you down there instead.

I wouldn’t mind if it showed that there was traffic and gave me no alternative options. On my commute I know enough alternative routes that would get me around most jams.
But Waze would show no delays on my main route until I got to the back of a jam. Then it would update the screen with a big trail of red stretching on for miles and miles. So, it knew the jam wass there and how long it went on for, it just wouldn’t update my display until I got into the queue and ‘told’ Waze that I was stuck. It used to be so annoying, getting updated to the massive tailback I had just arrived at, only once I had got to it when previously the route had shown as completely clear. It used to happen time after time.
And there’d be plenty of other Waze users bobbing around on the screen (although perhaps they were made up). Maybe, there just weren’t enough local users; although I’d say that the whole system doesn’t work reliably if a commute on the A1 and the A14 (both of which are massively busy at commute time) doesn’t contain enough users to give reliable information.

Perhaps over a year since I last used it, I should give it another go.

I just use plain vanilla Google maps and it seems fine. The live traffic is far better than the Sat Nav built into my truck and better than TomTom IMO

OK, picture this – I just want to pick up my phone and for it to show me the best route when I look at it, it knowing that I’m likely to be off to work.
Yes, Google maps does it, but not without me turning it on, programming a route then looking at the traffic details

It does though. At least it does if you turn on Google now travel info.

If you have an iPhone it will do this already. Just pull down from the top of the screen and the notifications widget will tell you how long it will take to get to where you normally go each morning.

Only issue is that it uses Apple maps. Google now is basically the same thing.