XM Local Traffic & Weather Info

[Chris Blount]

Here are the cities XM will offer local Traffic and Weather. Some will begin in March, some later. Also listed are the channel numbers:

210 Boston, MA
221 San Francisco
211 New York, NY
222 Los Angeles
212 Philadelphia, PA
223 San Diego, CA
213 Baltimore, MD
224 Phoenix
214 Washington, DC
225 Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX
215 Pittsburgh, PA
226 Houston, TX
216 Detroit, MI
227 Atlanta, GA
217 Chicago, IL
228 Tampa, FL
218 St. Louis, MO
229 Orlando, FL
219 Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
230 Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, FL
220 Seattle, WA

More detailed info can be seen HERE (http://www.xmradio.com/programming/neighborhood.jsp?hood=traffic) at the XMRadio web site.

[Steve Mehs]

Well the Traffic and Weather stations start tomorrow officially, Washington DC was put on air yesterday. Anyone with XM in their car, living in one of those 21 markets, feel free to write up a little review on if these stations helped you in your commute or not, or what you think of them in general. I think the weather/traffic idea is interesting, and I'm curious to how many will find it useful.

[BobMurdoch]

New York City!

It's UP and it's GOOD!

Now I NEVER have to tune to AM or FM again.....

[H2OSkier]

We're up and running in Los Angeles, but the sound quality is just awful. At times I'm having a hard time understanding the person. Hopefully they will tweak this a bit and make it more bearable.

Ken

[BobMurdoch]

Yeah, I did notice that..... The compression must be REAL heavy as it sounds like a cheap 20 year old answering machine with the audio distortion.....

Then again, I can still understand everything they are saying so I can live with it.....

[bullitt]

We're up and running in Los Angeles, but the sound quality is just awful. At times I'm having a hard time understanding the person. Hopefully they will tweak this a bit and make it more bearable.
Ken

It sounds similar to NOAA Weather for Marine but even more garbled and robotic. The LA info is usually the exact same sections of the same highways every day regardless of conditions elsewhere. For instance in the 2 weeks its been available I have yet to hear any info on the 5 or 405 Southbound from downtown through Orange County during evening rush. The announcers also need to learn how to pronounce locations.

[Evil Capserian]

You know guys, the updates are not instant. After listening for about an hour, they recycle same broadcast over the course of every half hour. The updates are only every half hour. KFWB is still more accurate with traffic on the ones. Just my 2 cents worth. I wouldn't pay a dime extra for those channels.

[BobMurdoch]

The XM New York channel seems to update every 15 minutes during rush hour. Each traffic and weather report loop lasts about 5 minutes so they repeat 2 or 3 times before they are updated.

[Strong]

I listened to it here (Tampa FL) but I just don't think its all that useful. Like most T&W it never seems to be able to tell you about the traffic conditions that you need spefically. Maybe if you could get a customized version based on the destination you specify in your GPS...

As far as weather goes, we have 2 seasons here, hot and hotter. And its either raining or not. Weather reports here are kind of silly.

All in all, I'd much prefer to listen to The Joint (101).

[djlong]

Well, I had the chance to sample several of the traffic channels during my trip from NH to SC and back this past weekend.

Pretty accurate from what I could tell. I used the NYC, Baltimore and DC channels to plot my way south and they were accurate. The weather channels in some areas could be a little more thorough. If they handle Boston the way they handle New York (Boston is due to turn on next Wednesday) there is frequently a SIGNIFICANT difference between the weather in Boston proper versus the southern 'burbs versus the norhtern 'burbs. Classic case was the Great Blizzard of '78 where Boston got snowed in but Cape Cod got mostly rain in some areas while others got up to 4 feet of snow. In NY, they gave the temperature for Manhattan, Newark and JFK as I recall. For Boston, they should do Boston, Providence RI and either Manchester or Concord NH - that'll cover anyone who'll be soon driving in/around that area.