Missing Campgrounds and Driving Speed | Google Earth, Maps, and Navigation | Forums

Just removed 2010 and installed S&T 2011 and am planning my BIG TRIP to Nova Scotia when I run into two issues.

1. When planning a days travle I would like to end up at my campground of choice and not by the side of the road 50 miles from nearest RV park at 9 PM. When I use S&T Nearest Places I find a good number of campgrounds do not show up so I have to use two or three other sources to try and find Campgrounds a reasonable distance from my expected route.  Once I find a campground I would like to save others the aggrivation and report the missing Place of Interest to MS.   Is there some way to do that where the information will not dissapear down a black hole in Redmond?  If MS doesn't have a method of collecting this information and providing timely updates to their oversights is there a 3rd party site that collects this trpe of info so others could download as POI file similar to the Mega File?

2. When planning a long day's drive I need to be reasonable with my driving speed. The Route Options / Driving speed setting has a number of Slower to Faster settings for a number of different typs of roads but the travel times always see faster than I expect. When settinf Limited Hwy as slower than average I calculate S&T is expecting me to average over 60 mph.  I have tried a couple of different settings and then back calculating the MPH S&T is using to do it's travel time calculation but the numbers don't seem to add up.   Does anyone know hwat the speeds are that MS uses for each level for each type of road?  I haven't found a consistent travel speed for different portions of Limited Access Highways nevermind all the other types of roads?

Chris,  Thanks for fast reply.

I knew that when you clicked on a campground for more info it takes you to Woodall's. Didn't realize they were responsible for campground list accuracy.  Hope someone can provide a contact.   I have started my own data spreadsheet so I can easily import the data per your video but only have a small number so far. Knowing that S&T depends on Woodall's listing makes it interesting to see just how many campgrounds Woodall's doesn't identify.  Guess I will need to continue to use the multiple sources I currently use.

RE average driving speeds.  Took some work as placing a start & end point for a trip exactly on an Interstate isn't easy but eventually have confirmed through calculations that MS average speeds for Limited Access roads is between a low of 60 mph and a high of 80 !

Not in my RV

2 lane arterial roads appear to have a low speed average of 35 up to a more reasonable max average of 45

"Other" roads have a range of 40 to 60

I'm not 100% sure of how they decide which 2 lane state routes are Arterial and which are "Main" and which are "Other"

Have to admit Garmin "Map Source" does a much better job for trip planning by letting the user enter numeric average speeds for 5 different types of roads, but Map Source is a more expensive program so maybe you get what you are paying for when it comes to travel time calculations.

See you in Madison, WI and Celina, OH  

Larry. Thanks for confirmation on Camsites comming from Woodalls.  I will let them know directly in the future. I do like the S&T function of searching for POI using a distance from a focal point rather than having to enter a town to search in as I have to do in MapSource.

The speed setting however does present a problem.

When planning a long trip I like to stop at a campground overnight along the way.  Finding a location to stop at is partially based on how many hours I plan to drive in a given day. If I am traveling on Limited Access Highways even the lowest speed setting appears to be expecting me to average about 60mph and if I make the mistake of using a higher speed it could expect me to average almost 80mph. NavTeq knows the posted speed limits as they show up on my Garmin. Have to wonder what they are thinking about suggesting an average speed almost 15mph above the posted limit.

Given the extra focus MS is placing in the Streets web page on RV drivers using S&T as a tool to plan trips I would think we should be able to select a slower and more reasonable speed.

Until S&T provides a more reasonable speed option I think I will have to use Garmin MapSource to plan the days driving then use the end point in Streets to find campgrounds in the area. Definately not a good or desirable situation especially considering how easy it should be to provide an RV friendly speed setting. MapSource does and their data also comes from NavTeq.

Ya I tend to drive more miles per day than a lot of others. Since we are not full timers we tend to drive to get to a destination. The trip I am working on involves going from Ohio to Nova Scotia and don't want to spend a week just getting there.

I will probably develop some guidelines for using S&T now that I better understand their Driving Speed formula.

 I have found a "sweet spot" for fuel economy and driving comfort and keeping up with traffic by setting the cruse at 57 mph. I am also comfortable driving 6 hours including stops so will ignore streets calculations and just shoot for 325 – 350 miles or so per travel day.  If I need a time estimate I will just use streets est time and increase by about 20%.

Don't know why this set me off so much other than the fact that MS touts streets for RV travel planning on their web site then seems to make no provisions to accomidate realistic RV use.  I think I need a "slow down and smell the roses" pill.

Thanks for the replies.