Accurate Travel Times
Written by Zoe Hellar Monday, 20 October 2008 21:25
Accurate Travel Times. The majority of GPS navigation equipment rely on the maximum speed limit of the roads to determin eht estimated destination time. To date, I am aware of only one organistaion that does it more differently and accurately- TomTom.
This is called IQ routes and was first introduced to their GO range. This is waht TomTom have to say about IQ Routes:
TomTom IQ Routes™
The new TomTom IQ Routes™ technology is based on actual average speeds on roads, rather than the posted speed limits. This intelligent routing technology is based on anonymous historical speed profiles of over 6.2 billion miles of driven roads, gathered over the years by millions of TomTom users. It takes into account all the factors that may influence the time it takes drivers to get to their destination, including traffic lights, rotaries, steep slopes and speed bumps.
The TomTom IQ Routes™ speed profile database continues to grow at the rate of over half a billion measurements per day, so the time and spatial accuracy of TomTom IQ Routes™ technology will continually increase. Drivers can be confident that they will always be given the smartest route, incorporating detailed local knowledge. This allows for more efficient daily route planning, in particular when driving through urban and mountainous areas.
Let’s take an example:
The standard shortest route from London City Airport to Paddington at a relatively quiet time, and with few hold-ups, should take 20 minutes, driving 9.5 kilometres. However, that same shortest route will typically take 29 minutes during a busier period. And this is reality most of the time. Using ‘local knowledge’ gained from the actual travel experiences of thousands of TomTom users on these very roads, IQ Routes™ instantly works out the optimal route from London City Airport London, to (city centre address). It also calculates your realistic journey time, based on real speeds people are able to drive, not just speed limits. In this case your route is now 10.5 kilometres longer, but will save you seven minutes (and a good deal of stress!). Now that’s a shortcut! Seven minutes may not sound much, but it’s over 28% off the journey time. Just consider for a moment how much time that will save over a whole year… Exactly!
Traditional routing, using maximum speed limits
Traditional routing methods use maximum speed limits in their calculations, which is great in theory. However, this information is not accurate in practice because of all the things a speed restriction sign cannot know – but local drivers can. It does this by using the trip data from more than seven million TomTom customers worldwide and is downloaded when they connect their device to TomTom HOME. This is a seamless exercise, and anonymous, effectively using the experiences of the whole TomTom community to deliver real value back to those with the IQ Routes feature.The data is analysed to discover actual patterns in driving speeds. The traditional method used 0.85% of the maximum speed limit in its calculation – IQ Routes uses the speeds people are actually driving on those roads. Since we are working with real information, all kinds of local delay are picked up, and the device uses this information to plan a route that will get you there more quickly, even if the maximum speed limit on the smarter route is the same or lower. Effectively, this means that all TomTom users can drive like a local, with the ability to take the fastest ‘local’ route, even in places they don’t know.These more reliable speed patterns can be quite different to the limit. How many times have you passeda speed limit sign in traffic thinking ‘if only I was actually going this fast…’? This is exactly the kind of information IQ Routes taps into to give users routes that they can rely on.
With IQ Routes users can be satisfied that they are taking the best route possible, making drives morecomfortable and predictable, getting there on time and stress-free.