lland

Am I receiving XM traffic?

I have yet to see a traffic incident on my NAV screen and when I "click" on show traffic incidences I always get "none within 30 miles."

When I go to zoom in and out, the "traffic" bar at the bottom of the screen is there sometimes and not others, even in the same place on different days. Is it there when I'm receiving traffic information and not when I'm not?

Also, I've yet to see any traffic flow indication on highways when I zoom the screen to be within the "traffic" bar. Granted, I have only been on the highway for any length of time twice (once yesterday where I don't believe I was in a covered area but got 25.1 MPG going (avg. 74 MPH) and 24.7 MPG returning (68.4 MPH)).

It may be that I've just been travelling in areas with no coverage or few incidences but I'd like some reassurances that its working.

Anyone?

LL

lausy

Where are you at? Are you positive your area has traffic? It is possible that they did not activate the traffic portion of XM for you. Either call XM yourself or have your dealer call to make sure it's activated.

CumbaJ

I'm not sure if they've increased the coverage areas, but there are only 20 or so cities that Navi Traffic works in......the major metropolitan cities.

I ran into the same problem a few months ago and did the following to refresh my XM signal:

1. Get the radio ID number by going to Channel 0 or 1 (dont remember which channel)
2. Got this link: http://www.xmradio.com/refresh
3. Enter your radio ID and move the RL out of the garage to allow satelite communication can begin.
4. You should be good to go after 15-20 minutes.

Let me know how you make out.......it worked for me.

lland

I tried refreshing a couple of days ago and it didn't make any difference.

Just called XM. They said traffic was active but they reset again anyway. I guess I'm just not in a covered area (Bucks County, PA...north of Philly).

LL

CumbaJ

LL,

I'm in Jersey, so when you cross the border there should be some traffic icons, especially in the NYC area.

lausy

Philly definitely should have coverage. Depending on how close you get to Philly, you should at least see incidents that happen there. After looking at XM's website, there is coverage in Bucks county and traffic flow info along I95. I would call XM again and make sure they check about the NAV Traffic portion of your account is activated. Like I said earlier, mine wasn't activated at delivery.

lausy

Just read something in another post that Stevemeister mentioned, so credit goes to him. Make sure that you choose to display traffic incidents in the menu. It's in the same area as show icons.

starmanj

I have same problem in Boston. I read some radios are defective and must be replaced, but they are on backorder due to similar problems. I've tried resetting radio dozens of times. It's definitely a firmware bug.

lland

Followup:

As of Saturday I has still yet to see a single traffic incident or flow indicated even though I live in a covered area and had travelled through other covered areas. Once again, I called XM (for the umteenth time) and finally got a rep who had a clue. My radio had never been transferred to me and the traffic had never been activated. He transferred the radio to my account and told me it only qualifies for 3 months free (sorry, it's an '06 with a year) and without a promotion code, there was nothing he could do.

I called my dealer (salesman) and told him to fix it and get back to me. He called back about 30 minutes later to tell me the traffic was finally activated (it was...hooray) and he was working on the one year promotion. At the end of the day (6:30 P.M. - they close at 6:00) he called to tell me it's all fixed. Ihope so.

The downside is that had I never transferred the radio to my name, I probably would have never been billed...but I wouldn't have the traffic either, which is what I wanted.

LL

db22

I read numerous posts regarding Navtraffic and the theme is very similar - It Doesn't Work. I have posted on more than one occasion, that my NavTraffic in LA is very pretty but useless. A completely closed freeway is shown as "no problem" and if I'm the only car on the freeway is shows as "Traffic Slow". I have contacted XM and all they know how to do is reset your radio. NavTeq is the provider of data to XM and numerous authorities are the provider of data to Navteq. The system suffers from the same disease as most data bases and that is that it is only as good as the data that is input. In Navteqs case, the data is too out of date and too sparse to be of any use.
Navteq is not the only provider of such data, our local newscast uses another provider and it shows significantly more comprehensive information. As long as there are different companies requesting this information, it will probably always be diluted to the point of uselessness.
Having complained to XM, Acura and to Navteq, my conclusion is that it is a great idea that in ten years may be of some use (particularly if people unsubscribe or complain heavily).
I recently received a bill for another year of Traffic and I was in a quandry as to what to do: If I pay the bill, they will conclude that they are doing a good job and will therefore never improve. If I don't pay the bill my display won't be as colorful, I won't know if the system has improved and they will lose revenue so that they may not ever be able to improve. I actually exercised a third option: I complained to XM regarding the bill and they gave me 3 months free to see if there would be any improvement in that time. Of course, I don't expect any improvement because nothing has improved over the last two years so why would three months generate a quantum leap in its effectiveness?
It may be worth a lot more people complaining because most of us like the feature but if it does not perform its intended function then a reoppropriation of funds may be required.

jftjr

I think it just depends on where in the country you are located.

I have to say, not only have I noticed significant improvements in coverage in my area (Metro Philadelphia/South NJ) but the accuracy has improved greatly. I don't think it's a coincidence that local TV instant-traffic coverage has gotten concomitantly better over that time, either. When I first got my RL (September 05) it was of limited usefulness around here, but it has definitely improved.

Now, there still isn't any coverage in Delaware, nor is there green/yellow/red coverage on most SJ roads, but there are traffic incidents and accident reporting, and the Philly road info tends to be dead on. It's kept me out of quite a few jams on the way to Chester and Bensalem.... and alerted me to accidents in the area in NJ.

Is it perfect? No. But it was worth $48 a year to me.

db22

Is it perfect? No. But it was worth $48 a year to me.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for your input - maybe I should keep hope but here in LA it's just a bunch of pretty colors and icons. The freeways colors rarely display the true velocity and the icons must be from another city. Hollywood freeway this morning had 3 lanes closed for its entire lengh by Caltrans for resurfacing, my map displayed Nothing.
I would like to hear from other LA drivers because it seems that other cities may be better at it.