selmeralto

I'm hoping someone can give me a bit of advice about overriding the Navigation system's proposed routes.

Here's the problem. I live on the east side of town. There's a busy N-S street (Broad Street) that the Nav system seems to recognize as both a highway (Route 611) and a street (Broad Street). So when I want to go from the SE to the NW, for example, the Nav system always want to have me use Broad Street, which is a very busy street.

This happens whether I select "shortest route" or "avoid highways". To make matters worse, if I cross Broad Street and keep heading west, the system recalculation always wants to take me back to Broad Street instead of recalculating to take me the shortest route to where I'm going from that point.

I've tried fooling with Detour and Via Point but haven't had much luck. What I'd really like to do is to tell the system to send me by a faster alternate route (Kelly Drive) but I can't seem to enter that successfully alphabetically. I've tried marking the street but that hasn't worked.

I had a similar situation when I was near an interstate and wanted to get on the highway when the Nav system was engaged. I wanted the system to get me to the nearest entrance and couldn't manage it.

I suspect the fault is with me and not with the system so if some kind soul would post a few How-To's on this part of the Nav system, I'd be grateful.

j1mb0x99

Have you tried telling it to avoid Broad Street? You can do that in the detour menu by the alt route. I have had luck using this option when I want to avoid a busy rush hour road.

-JiM

selmeralto

Thanks, JiM.

That may help me avoid Broad Street and I'll give it a try.

How about instructing the system to use a specfic alternative route (say, Kelly Drive)? What is the best way to do that?

Jsuzuki

I'm having the same problem. I wish there was a way to mark out an area as "no drive zone." Even key it according to time... So one could avoid say the airport area during operating hours.

I have noticed that the nav seems to learn minor detours over time. Instead of trying to code the nav to the route you want, ignore it and go the way you know is best. Now for detours where the difference is greater then 2 minutes or so, it seems to never learn. Same with detours that involve U-turns. (U turns and "sharp turns" is avoided so much that I've had the nav instruct me to do a 30 mile detour to avoid a U turn.)

I wish there was a way to customize the nav more, even if it's from a hidden advanced menu.

jtdwab

I think the problem is in the road clasification within the navigation software. Each road gets clasified based on some factor, but I don't know what, maybe number of lanes. The more lanes the better the road is for travel or something like that. I don't think it is based on speed limit because it will pick roads with posted 35 mph at time over a highway a mile or two away with a speed limit of 60.

I have the same problem near my house. Their is a 5-7 lane road that the NAV thinks is the best road for everything. Its speedlimit is posted at 35-45 mph and it has a lot of traffic lights. I can get places a whole lot quicker by going the wrong way a mile or so getting on the interstate and going around a slightly longer way. It didn't matter if I choose shortest route or avoid highways. It is like this road with a 35 mph speed limit and a light every other mile is a better route that the interstate that almost paralles it but has fewer lanes.

As for the original questions I don't think you can bias the system for a particular road. The avoid street option under detour does work. One note of caution. I used the avoid road feature last night for a trip to a destination that I knew how to get to. It came up with another route that was way longer and went through a lot of neighborhoods. I decided to just go the way it had originally picked but I couldn't get it to go back to the first route. The system held onto the avoid road until I started from scratch and entered a new destination. Their maybe a way to approve a road that had been avoided before but I couldn't find it.

One more thing on this rather long post. I did a routing today for a destination that I was prettys sure I could get to. Anyway I started out and it was going the way I had figured out in my head. Well after about 10 miles it had me take a right and follow another road back the interstate. The odd thing is I could have gone directly to the interstate from my house and saved about 5 to 10 miles of driving. I kept going the way I wanted and it adapted after a few miles. It was strange that it picked that route to the interstate, its never tried to send me that way before. Anybody else see this?

selmeralto

This is very interesting. Does anyone know if this is true and if so how this learning works? Has anyone had experience with the "learning" capacity of the navigation system?

Jsuzuki

From what I have observed on what the nav will avoid, ordered from most averse.

1) Small residential streets. The system will never suggest a residential street as detour.

2) U-Turns. The system will avoid U-turns. One time when I was five miles on a approach that would require a U-turn near the destination, the system suggested a 30 mile detour to avoid the U-turn... Now the detour was through canyon roads so I was tempted, but my lunch time was over so....

3) Like small residential streets, areas with 30 mph limits are avoided.

If any of the 3 is on your preferred route, the nav will never suggest it, no matter how many times you take the route.


Learning:
Like I mentioned, it seems anything with less then 5 minute difference in ETA and doesn't go through any of the 3 areas, the system seems to remember and suggests the route last taken.

It would be interesting to quiz the Navtech engineer who wrote the design on why something was done in a certain way...