My wife uses TomTom’s live traffic service on her work commute and apparently it’s pretty good. Yearly subscription seems quite steep though – think it’s £50. Are smartphone apps now at the level where they can compete with this sort of live traffic service?

Guess it depends on where the data comes from for live traffic – is it owned by TomTom? Or is it generated by someone else and satnav companies lease it out and can compete on price etc.

It’s the main reason I keep using my TomTom instead of my phone, it really can come in handy if you’re travelling at busy times. I’ve never compared the info with things like Google’s traffic flow data though.

Garry_Lager – Member

My wife uses TomTom’s live traffic service on her work commute and apparently it’s pretty good. Yearly subscription seems quite steep though – think it’s £50. Are smartphone apps now at the level where they can compete with this sort of live traffic service?

CoPilot Live offers it for £10 a year. Pretty good, think it pools the data with that from one of the other big nav companies.

Here’s what it looks like on the phone:

http://blog.copilotlive.com/na/2012/04/24/save-time-fuel-and-frustration-with-activetraffic/

I’d try something like WAZE first – its free, has live traffic info and users upload info about hazards in addition to the generated congestion and travel time info. It can struggle as an actual satnav in areas where theres a lot of 3G contention – I found it useless for navigation in london for instance. But for routes you know its pretty handy

TomTom’s HD Traffic on the iPhone is £23.99 per year.
Worth every penny if you live in a city or have a long commute.
Saved me so much time when travelling from West Manchester to Piccadilly Station every day.
We now live near York and I only buy a monthly subscription (£2.99) when I need it.
iPhone maps are updated very regularly for free, as is the app.

As above, TomTom HD Traffic works really well. Personally I think it’s great value but I suppose it comes down to how much you value your time, and how much you like sitting in traffic jams. 😀

I’m currently using Waze on my phone and am perservering with it, but am not convinced.
Will give it a bit longer, but it does seem that a lot of the time it doesn’t flag up any problems, then I get to the back of a queue and send a ‘traffic jam’ hazard and all of a sudden it updates the map with a dark red traffic line and tells me the traffic condiions up ahead have changed and the journies going to be loads longer.

Yes, I know this is how the system works; it relies on people reporting problems for the data to be correct. But, I seem to be the lone updater on my journey (which is a very busy A road commute, so hardly off the beaten track) and always at the pointy end of the problems. Which kinda makes it pointless. I might as well just rely on gut instinct.

Waze got bought by Google a while back and apparently the live traffic data uses the data from Waze users to update. I’m guessing it uses other sources as well, so potentially Google Maps traffic data is better than the Waze data.
Also, Waze has no way of giving you a ‘route overview’ showing snarl-ups. On Google this is useful as if you know the roads, you can assess what it’s looking like ahead and use local knowledge to find a better route.

Of you’re going to use the phone get a bracket and use power lead, the sat nav apps run the battery down very fast

I bought at tmc receiver for my tom tom. It’s a combined charger/aerial that picks up traffic data and updates your route.
I think it comes from the same system but rather than the continuous updates of the hd subscription system, mine updates every 5/6 minutes. Which isn’t really a problem on the motorways, where I use it most skirting the M60.
About £30 one-off payment for it.

Have Tom Tom made any improvements to the TMC system?

When I last bought a sat nav (5 years ago) there were many complaints about the Tom Tom TMC system, from not receiving any signal to receiving traffic reports that were highly delayed and useless.

For what its worth, the traffic report on Google Maps seems to be quite accurate. I check it every morning using my phone and figure out which route I’m going to take to work before I set off. Doesn’t work seamlessly like the Tom Tom HD system which will alert you mid journey and reroute but the information does seem to be correct at the time when you check it.

having tried using Waze, the highways agency app to negate renewing Tom Tom Live last year i renewed and mine is due again this month, and I will renew it again. The simplicity is well worth the money and it’s way more accurate than the others.

I’m convinced it also uses data from the units as well as public info. It’s not cheap but I CBA to start mauling with a host of devices when i set off on my journey.

Tmc has been fine for me. It’s certainly advised me which is the best route from Leeds to the west, routes notorious for bumps and delays.