How should I use GPS and mapping for long trips

In My Humble Opinion
1

Don’t need answer fast (in fact, I’m not sure there is a definitive answer).

A little background:

I live in Los Angeles. Every Christmas, I spend a few days with my family in Northern California, about 2 1/2 hours north of San Francisco (nearest freeway is the 101). I generally drive, as I find the drive allows me to spend some contemplation time and I have more control over my travel (the alternatives, which I have used, are to fly into SFO and then drive for about 2 1/2 hours or fly into Santa Rosa at twice the price and drive about an hour).

The routes north from LA are limited (Google maps times with light/no traffic and no stops in parentheses). The 5 (8 hours), the 101 (9 hours), and the 99 (~12 hours). Both the 5 and 99 routes require getting over to the 101 at some point, of course. Generally I take the 5 north (with stops and some traffic, it takes 9-10 hours), unless the Tejon pass is closed due to snow. I know the route, but I use my GPS to see what’s ahead of me and adjust my route.

Going south, I generally reverse my route north, but if the 5 has severe problems, I’ll just shoot down the 101. The problem is, I have to make the decision about 6-8 hours before the pass. This last year, I ran into a situation where the pass was dicey when I left my family’s house and by the time I hit Berkley, the pass was closed and my GPS was predicting up to 15-18 hours to my destination. I knew from the LA traffic/weather Sirius station that they had closed the pass to those without chains but expected to start escorting vehicles through shortly, and might fully open the pass sometime later. Somewhere around Oakland/Hayward, I made the decision to try the 101 (not the ideal decision point) and proceeded to snake down the East Bay and intercept the 101 in San Jose. My GPS was giving me routes to cut over and take the 5 to the pass, but still with absurd (18 hours) times to destination. Everything went fine until I hit Santa Barbara, when I hit the mother of all traffic jams (at 10 PM!). Once past Santa Barbara, it was smooth sailing, but all told, my trip took 12 1/2 hours! After the fact, it turned out that they did re-open the pass in the late evening, and I might have hit it just after re-opening if I stuck to my original route.

The question:

So, my question is “How should I use modern GPS and mapping when I have to make significant route decisions many hours beforehand?” I know that the GPS predictions run on current traffic conditions, but those conditions can change drastically over 6-8 hours. Some, like rush hour traffic, are predictable, but others have a Schrodinger-like quality, not resolving until the measurement occurs.

How do you handle these situations, where making the wrong decision might add 2-3 hours to your trip time?

2

Are you familiar with Waze?

My experience with GPS has never been good with the kinds of situations you describe. You need real time info—not sure if anybody has surpassed Waze, but check. However, you can possibly program multiple routes into your GPS ahead of time and select the one that suits you as conditions arise. My Garmin did have a button for “Detour” but the results were pretty mixed.

Also maybe you can prep a list of local traffic stations to dial in on the radio along the way. Googling, I get: Call (800) 427-7623 for the Caltrans Highway Information Network (CHIN). If you map out your rest stops (pee breaks, getting a bite to eat, putting in gas) you can make phone calls while you’re stopped. Or Bluetooth.

3

I frequently travel from Fremont, just south of Hayward, to Anaheim, so I know your situation. 101 is usually weather issue free, but is a lot longer than 5. Traffic jams in Santa Barbara seem to be the rule, so if you go there at anything approaching rush hour is going to be a problem. The two biggest problems I faced were a fire just before the Grapevine once and a bunch of accidents on 5 in LA.
I’d say forget about traffic and try to figure out the fundamental issue. If it is weather or a fire you’ll be stuck in it, and should take an alternate route. If it is an accident, it will probably be cleared by the time you get there.
Waze or a GPS will recommend you alternates, but it will recommend them to everyone else also, so I’m not sure how great that is as a solution.

And Hayward to 101? That was my commute every day for 20 years. That’s just the way 880 is.

4

Well, as I said, Sirius has a bunch of “local” traffic/weather stations that simply rotate through current traffic and weather non-stop. I have Waze, but haven’t found the “predict best route 6 hours from now” button. Waze used to be my go-to for navigating LA traffic, but Google maps has actually considerably improved their alternate routes algorithms and now I consider them about equal. It is the long range prediction that is the missing element.

And something that Voyager can probably attest to that exacerbates alternate routing in California is the problem of alternate routes when traveling between SF and LA. Because the state is so long in the north-south direction and predominately rural (geographically), there aren’t that many opportunities to “switch over” in the east west direction and most of them will automatically add an hour to your travel time, even with no traffic. Once you commit, you have get a couple of hours of benefit to justify switching.

5

It sounds to me like you enjoy or prefer the road less traveled. Plan it that way from the start. But if you want to avoid chaos I have some bad news. During a traffic melt-down the road less traveled gets the overflow.

With that said I think it’s important to look at the technology being used. Cell phone GPS apps are great until you drive out of tower range. Not only do you not have any current traffic warnings you lose the map too. I’ve had it happen to me at a critical junction point and I had no maps available to make a decision.

If you use a dedicated GPS unit you have the luxury of map data stored in the unit along with tower connectivity for real-time traffic issues. But you’re limited to that GPS’s alert system.

If you have a passenger who can act as navigator then use both. You don’t need to be a distracted driver. if you’re by yourself then I would go with a stand-alone GPS that updates with real-time traffic alerts.

6

Google Maps, on Android at least, lets you store maps also. And I doubt that anyone driving between LA and the Bay Area is ever going to get out of cellphone range, not unless you go way, way off course.

7

I’ll have to check on that. Good advise.

8

Google Maps and Waze factor in aggregate data from their users to build up data about how busy a particular route usually is at a particular time. Google Maps is better at this, because if you have an Android phone and have opted to allow location data, your phone is tracking all of the time, not just when you are running the Maps app.

If you want to pick the best route at a particular time in the future, you can set the departure time and/or the arrival time in the Google Maps app.

9

Well sometimes when the major highways are closed in the high mountains because of massive blizzards the two-lane roads are also closed even if Google suggests them as an alternative:

10

Here’s an alternative idea: Why is it so essential that these visits happen in December? The days are short and cold, and weather is often a problem.

How about do your annual visits in summer instead? Long days, good weather, good road conditions.

And make the drive part of the trip. Enjoy the scenery. Take little side-trips here and there. Visit Solvang. Visit Lompoc. Visit Los Osos and go hiking at Montaña de Oro. Visit Point Reyes.

Hey, go for the max drive! Take Highway 1 the whole way!

11

When we took our big Midwestern Road Trip Adventure (Dallas → Rapid City and back, via Colorado), what we ended up doing was buying a good printed US road atlas as a backup, and using Google Maps as our primary navigation tool.

You can download the maps ahead of time, so that if there’s spotty service, you can still navigate. Most of the trip had adequate cell service, so it would direct us around road construction, etc… where practical. I mean, we did catch some construction but it was mostly in places where the alternative meant over 100 extra miles out of the way versus 30 minutes in road construction, like US 85 north of Lusk, WY.

Waze is an option, but Google Maps (Google owns Waze, FWIW) seems to be more convenient for longer trips because Waze doesn’t officially let you download the maps ahead of time. Both share the same pool of driver information to show you slowdowns, stoppages, etc…

12

Tell me about it! We were in a heavy traffic stop and go situation on the 580 out of SF and Waze suggested a surface street route around the traffic obstruction. I think half the east bound traffic also used Waze and took the same detour, because it was 15-20 miles of stop (emphasis on stop) and go traffic. I think it would have been quicker to stay on the freeway, We could see the traffic on the freeway moving faster than we were putting through Livermore.

13

For a while (and it might still be true) 680 between Mission and Auto Mall got so crowded that a lot of people were detouring through the streets. Fremont put up lots of extras stop signs to slow people down, and even blocked roads. A similar thing happens on 17 just before you head into the mountains for Santa Cruz.

14
  • Because people want to get together with family for the holidays.
  • Because either your employer shuts down the last week of the year or you have use-it-or-lose-it vacation days left to burn up & the kids are out of school.
  • Because that’s the only week that all of the (adult) siblings & grandkids are collectively available to go to the grandparents.
  • All of the above are about the destination not about the drive.
  • Because it’s harder to do ski &/or snowshoe in the summer
  • Because winter sun is in a different place than summer sun / winter landscapes are different, maybe even prettier than summer ones. Going to Yellowstone in winter to (photo) shoot the wildlife is much higher on my bucket list than going in the summer. I want to shoot snowy bison
15

I have a similar situation going to Lawn Guylant. There are 4 crossings of the Hudson.

  • Outerbridge or Goethals & Verrazano combo
  • Holland
  • Lincoln
  • GW (nope, never)

When it’s time to make my route decision, while still in NJ, any accident on the Belt or the LIE is probably over an hour away & therefore, most likely to be cleared before I ever get near it. While traffic is ugly on route A now, it won’t be nearly that bad because they’re currently clearing that accident & all lanes will be opened within 5 mins & that currently-stopped traffic will all be dissipated ½ hour before I get there. Obviously, they can’t know about accidents that haven’t happened yet & there’s no way of knowing if it’s a routine accident that’ll be cleared soon or the road will be closed for an extended period of time do to a (potential) death investigation or because it’s a police-involved shooting (happened twice that I know of in the past month or two)

16

When this popped up, I had completely forgotten about starting this thread.

I don’t think there is an actual answer to my original question. All mapping software suffers from drawbacks with respect to short term and long term prediction.

In the short term, there is always a delay in reporting incidents and slowdowns, so you can run into the situation I ran into earlier this week on the 405 North, where my GPS showed orange (slower speed), but traffic was really stop and go until I reached the spot at which an accident had occurred. At that point, the CHP stopped all the traffic in all the lanes in order to clear the wreck from the freeway. The car in front of me was the very last car let past the site. No way that any aid of any sort could have predicted that.

In the longer term, there is no way to predict the traffic conditions towards the end of a long journey. The best mapping software can do is predict “typical” traffic conditions at the time you might expect to reach a particular spot. It can’t predict whether the pass will be open or closed or whether a tanker truck will overturn and burn across 4 lanes (as happened in the 80’s on the section of the 5 linking Orange County to San Diego).

Now, generally this isn’t a huge deal. There are surface streets to bypass traffic issues and they may add 20 minutes or so to your trip time. However, in the West, there are a fair number of “main arteries” in states where the bypass will automatically add hours, not minutes to your travel time. California isn’t an exceptional case (well, maybe the sheer volume of traffic affected makes it exceptional)