I'm going to Norway in a few weeks, and have been planning a road trip around Scandinavia. I'm having an inordinate amount of difficulty getting Garmin Mobile PC to include ferries in it's routing. CN Europe 2010 is installed and working properly.

I've planned a route from Norway to Umeå (in Sweden) from where there is ferry service across the Gulf of Bothnia to Vaasa. (in Finland) I've taken the route right to the ferry terminal in maximum zoom, right to road's end. It's about a 3-4 hour ferry trip apparently, but Mobile PC insists on taking me "on the road" and routing me around the northern end of the gulf, a journey of many hundreds of kilometers.

Now, it's no big deal as long as Mobile PC gets me to the terminal, which it apparently will do, but on a longer, more convoluted route, would Mobile PC avoid ferries in it's routing? It gets even worse as I go further south in Finland and want to take the ferry from Turku back to Stockholm. It keeps insisting that I re-trace my steps back north and around the end of the gulf and back down the Swedish side... Ridiculous!

I know that Streets and Trips has an input window with sliders in which you can establish preferences for the types of roads, ferries, etc. that you want to use in your routing. S&T plotted this same route exactly as I expected it, including two ferry trips...

Has anyone else run across this idiosyncracy? Is Mobile PC afraid to get it's feet wet?

Make sure you have not checked 'Ferries' in Settings - Routing - Avoidance Setup.

Does Mobile PC show the ferry route? It may be missing from the Navteq mapping data.

Terry

Attached Images

Ferries.jpg (101.6 KB)

I've never altered any of those settings, and no, "Ferries" is not checked. I can't see how it could NOT be included... In the center and south of the two countries, the ONLY possibility of travel between the two is by ferry.

Interestingly enough, I just planned some other routes in western Norway that I've driven before, and they included ferries just fine. Mind you, there's no alternative to taking the ferry on some of them.

And the ferry to Vancouver Island seems to pick up just fine....

There are 4 ferry routes to Vancouver Island and all are shown on the map. Routing using any of them works fine. Possibly the one you are looking for in Europe is not included in the mapping data so Mobile PC can't route that way.

Terry

OK, I zoomed in closer to have a look, and both ferry routes I mentioned are apparently shown on the map as numbered highways. The one in the south especially is used by thousands of vehicles each day. There are 3 or 4 different carriers on that line.

???

I don't have Mobile PC but I do have City Navigator Europe NT 2010.1. I was able to successfully create a route in MapSource from Vaasa to Umeå. MapSource does use the ferry. Below I have pasted the directions generated by MapSource. I don't know why Mobile PC would not do the same.

1. Vaasa 0 ft 0:00:00 N63 05.896 E21 37.551
2. Get on Sepänkyläntie and drive southwest 0 ft 0 ft 0:00:00 0:00:00 0° true N63 05.896 E21 37.551
3. Turn right onto E12 1.3 mi 1.3 mi 0:03:02 0:03:02 258° true N63 05.486 E21 35.404
4. Board ferry E12 2.4 mi 1.2 mi 0:03:20 0:06:22 241° true N63 05.296 E21 33.359
5. Get off of ferry onto E12 60.5 mi 58.1 mi 4:27:34 4:33:56 328° true N63 40.894 E20 20.481
6. Enter roundabout Roundabout 70.8 mi 10.3 mi 0:16:49 4:50:45 344° true N63 47.921 E20 17.067
7. Take the 2nd right onto E12 70.8 mi 271 ft 0:00:07 4:50:52 324° true N63 47.949 E20 17.021
8. Enter roundabout Roundabout 72.2 mi 1.3 mi 0:02:04 4:52:56 21° true N63 48.472 E20 14.969
9. Take the 1st right onto E12 72.2 mi 169 ft 0:00:05 4:53:01 15° true N63 48.498 E20 14.984
10. Turn right onto Storgatan 73.5 mi 1.3 mi 0:02:24 4:55:25 24° true N63 49.564 E20 15.352
11. Umeå 73.6 mi 0.2 mi 0:00:49 4:56:14 199° true N63 49.515 E20 15.646

resophil, does it make any difference if you switch between "faster time" or "shorter distance" in the routing preferences? Just curious.

...ken...

That famous French detective, Inspector Clouseau was once heard to remark, "Mark my words, Francois! There are sinister forces at work!"

I had time to try this a bit more and it has totally baffled me with it's inconsistency. It doesn't seem to matter if "faster" or "shorter is checked, it didn't want to get on board the ship.

After reading SkiWithGPS's reply and noting that his route was the reverse of mine, I tried a route that ran from east-to-west as well. It worked! Then when I tried it west-to-east, that worked too! The only thing I can see is that my earlier routes were long (3000 km) and these two succesful efforts were only planned as segments of the earlier longer route.

So I have broken things up into routes that cover partials of my earlier grand tour and now things work fine.

It's maddening!