How long does it take you to get Real Time traffic colored lines? I leave my work and in 3 minutes I am on the freeway, and the lines are not updated until the 4th minute. Is this standard for everyone? I am in sf bay area. I hate it cuz if there is a traffic jam I get stuck, since I have 2 options for my route...07 RL

 

Varies in DC. Probably about 2 minutes on average.

 

My Real time takes about 4 mins too but the big issue is if it's useful. I have stated my opinion on traffic before but I would like to reiterate: So Cal 118 fwy E bound - Yesterday an accident closed the fwy. Fortunately I was travelling west but I noticed the "issue" on the monitor at my work. My NavTraffic showed no accident. I was within 10 mins of the accident and my Navtraffic showed the accident. The AM radio gave me the truth - Fwy CLOSED. My screen showed no slowing of traffic, just that there was an accident. I proceded westbound and measured about 4 miles of back-up but my Navtraffic showed traffic flowing freely.
I have never worked out the seriousness of the indications on my Navtraffic system, it shows an accident and I don't see one and the freeway can be closed and it doesn't show anything. It is as good as useless for a real time system - great concept and extemely badly implemented.
Yesterday evening I was with my daughter who showed me the surrounding traffic issues on her iphone so I checked my Navtraffic. The information was different and as to which was correct? My guess would be the iphone because I know from experience that Navtraffic is solely there to make you feel techno and to make the screen prettier.
Years ago, I complained to XM re: Navtraffic and they offered me 6 mos free because they said that the system was being improved and that they were sure that the improvements would impress me. The years have passed and it still sucks.

 

My load time varies from 1 to several minutes. I haven't correlated it to anything I can discern, and I live/work far enough from the freeways that it's pretty working before I have to make any choices.

Last night, I noted a deep, red line on my route home, NB 163 to 15 in San Diego, and bailed out to a frontage road exit before traffic really slowed much. As I drove over a bridge, I could see the whole freeway stopping and it was like that for miles. NavTraffic said it was an accident 6 miles north... I still hit traffic on the "bailout" but Waaaaaay less than what those poor saps sat in. I like it.

 

Usually about 1 minute. Before I pull out of the parking garage I use 'Display Traffic Incidents' and buy the time I clear the parking garage the screen refreshes and the ! icons fill the screen like a popcorn machine. The traffic flow lines also populate.

Perhaps it varies with the market area and their communication with NavTeq?

 

I do not have a problem with the traffic flow lines populating, I have a problem with them relating to "real time"

 

Indeed. There are at least 2 layers of operation which can have great impact on how 'real time' it is.

First, how is the market set up for traffic flow information (camera, road sensors and command centers). Second, how quickly is that information reported / relayed / updated to NAVTEQ. That is assuming that NAVTEQ has standard feed to XM.

Random traffic incidents tend to be my barometer as to how quickly it reports. I have witnessed accidents which popped up on my NAVI within 3 minutes. But Tampa Bay has a fairly advanced Traffic Reporting network...and based on our congestion, it is worth it.

I have noticed in the last months occasional 'burps' in the service and XM in general. I suspect some of it is due to XM and Sirius combining networks and removing some operational redundancies?

 

Usually 1-2 minutes in the Detroit Metro area. Depends on how quickly it locks on to the satellite signals. I have a Passport 9500i radar detector that uses GPS. Once the voice in the RD states "GPS signal acquired", I usually see the traffic icons and flow begin to update on the nav.

 

I just downgrade the color by one shade. In DC, it's never really green. If I see green, I view it as yellow. Yellow is probably really red, and if it shows red, you may as well just get out of the car and walk around for a while...

 

I'm in the bay area a well.
Before I upgraded to 4.73, the traffic seemed to update every five minutes on the recurrece of hh:07, hh:12, hh:17, hh:22, etc.
Thus, at start-up, it depended on how far in advance of one of these updates. For example, if navi started up at hh:05, traffic flow would not appear until hh:12. I assumed start-up was not far enough in advance of the :07 update to receive all the information. And the flow lines appeared virtually all at once, i.e. a complete refresh of all lines.
After upgrading to 4.73, I notice that the lines appear in a gradual sequence at start-up. Thus, I start seeing some lines in just a couple minutes, but entire set may not appear for a full 5 minutes or so.
I should state, that before upgrade I had the original '05 DVD. Forgot what version that was.
As for "real-time" I agree with db. Seems some areas in bay area get updated more frequently than others. I have commented before on this as well. I believe it depends on the source of the data as well as how many hand-off points before XM gets the data for transmission. I talked to a NavTeq guy at a tech conference, and they said that some sources are highway sensors, others are actual data being sent from vehicles, and a few others I forget. They get some data directly, while in some areas, they contract with sources that aggregate data from the real sources.
Net/net - my experience is that it can be near real-time for some highways in bay area; while some places, the data can be one hour out of date. I observed this directly on a reverse commute over san mateo bridge. I saw completely stopped traffic in opposite direction. I was driving for another hour and I kept checking back to bridge in Navi and red flow did not show up until one hour after I observed it.