closed roads notifications?

For help and advice on the Garmin Zumo XT2.
VeeBee
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Joined: 08 Jul 2020 18:41
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Great Britain

closed roads notifications?

Post by VeeBee »

My XT2 has routed me via roads that are closed for repairs 4 times over the last week. It looks like many will be shut for weeks, so not just a temporary one day jobs.

This is annoying, not just in city centres which have many one-way streets, but also in rural areas where an alternative road could be miles away. If it had routed me properly in the first place I could have avoided having to turn back or travel way out of my way.

My son-in-law uses Apple maps on his phone, which he says knows about road closures, so why doesn’t Garmin? I thought this was what the Tread app was for? I have Tread connected so expected up to date road info but there was nothing.

Garmin also doesn’t seem to know about bus lanes. Just last week whilst riding in heavy rain through an unfamiliar city centre, it directed me through a bus gate (the full road changes to buses only for a small section then goes back to normal traffic again) cost me £35 fine. I was following cars, so it wasn’t only me who got caught out! I paid the fine because it was my fault for not seeing the sign, it’s ridiculous how the main road just changes and drivers have to U-turn in busy city centre.

Anyway, question is (other than avoidances/assistance which I’ve setup) is there a setting I’ve missed to enable detection of closed roads and bus lanes etc?
jfheath
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Great Britain

Re: closed roads notifications?

Post by jfheath »

The Zumos rely on data broadcast from the Tread app on your phone, and (if it is an Android) Tread has to have the Alert permission set for these to be sent to the XT2 in the first place. So Tread has to be installed and linked to your phone.
Settings -> Navigation -> Traffic has to be enabled.
Settings -> Map Display -> Map Layers also has a tick box for Traffic.

Having said that, the information that they get from traffic must be edited in someway. So recently I have seen road closures, which thank goodness I ignored, because it turned out to be just a set of traffic lights.

I have encountered a zumo reported road closure on the A6 in Derbyshire, which I again ignored. I stopped to check it out - there was a closure, but not on the part of the A6 that I was traveling.

I have had a genuine road closure reported, but I knew a way around it. But the Zumo recalculated the route on more major roads, which makes sense for a lot of traffic, but Zumos are devices for motorcycles..... ??? But it re-calculated the route without any prompting.

So I rarely have traffic turned on. It is no use if you cannot rely on it.

TheAA.com has pretyy accurate info about what roads have road closures - so I generally take a look at that before I set off on a long journey.

There is another consideration that I have noticed - it only ever picks up road works or closures in the segment that you are currently riding. A 'segment' seems to be the word that Garmin now uses to refer to the section of route that is bounded by two Via Points. So it doesn't seem to be able to look beyond the next Via Point. That means that if the road works are just after a Via Point, you will get very little notice of it.
Have owned Zumo 550, 660 == Now have Zumo XT2, XT, 595, 590, Headache
Use Basecamp (mainly), MyRouteApp (sometimes), Competent with Tread for XT2, Can use Explore for XT - but it offers nothing that I want !

Links: Zumo 590/5 & BC . . . Zumo XT & BC
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Peobody
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Re: closed roads notifications?

Post by Peobody »

My experience with road closure notices on my XT has not been good. Closed roads have not been announced, open roads have been announced as closed (the later has been more common). It would be a nice feature if it could be relied on. Illogical and inefficient reroute results have been experienced when the XT was allowed to calculate around a closure. I hope the XT2 is better in that regard.
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