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Sirius XM Eliminates the Traffic Channels (133 - 136)

G

Gregg.

As of midnight on Feb. 28th, Sirius XM is eliminating the Traffic Channels. 133 NYC, 136 Los Angeles, 134 and 135 various other big cities. It's part of Sirius XM's cut backs. Blame it partially on the Pandemic. Factories that made chips were closed. That meant Detroit was making fewer new cars. That meant fewer new subscribers were signing up for Sirius XM. That meant fewer dollars coming into the Sirius XM bank account.

Those channels are sometimes used for live sports, preempting the traffic when needed. And they will likely continue to be used for live sports. But the rest of the time, they'll probably just be prerecorded barker channels, announcing the upcoming sports schedule.

About five years ago, Sirius XM temporarily turned off the traffic channels. At that time there were about eight. After listeners protested, the company restored four channels. But now, with many of us getting traffic info from our phones, the protest may not come this time.
 
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WOAH. That's a true end of an era. Where are you hearing about this?
 
Gregg. said:
As of midnight on Feb. 28th, Sirius XM is eliminating the Traffic Channels. 133 NYC, 136 Los Angeles, 134 and 135 various other big cities. It's part of Sirius XM's cut backs. Blame it partially on the Pandemic. Factories that made chips were closed. That meant Detroit was making fewer new cars. That meant fewer new subscribers were signing up for Sirius XM. That meant fewer dollars coming into the Sirius XM bank account.

Those channels are sometimes used for live sports, preempting the traffic when needed. And they will likely continue to be used for live sports. But the rest of the time, they'll probably just be prerecorded barker channels, announcing the upcoming sports schedule.

About five years ago, Sirius XM temporarily turned off the traffic channels. At that time there were about eight. After listeners protested, the company restored four channels. But now, with many of us getting traffic info from our phones, the protest may not come this time.
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Those channels sound so bad it is offensive. Starved for bits! Also, I can’t imagine many would sit through another city’s traffic report for their own on those combined market channels. Good riddance.
 
Ryan Williams said:
Those channels sound so bad it is offensive. Starved for bits! Also, I can’t imagine many would sit through another city’s traffic report for their own on those combined market channels. Good riddance.
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But you gotta admit, it was a very unique feature that nobody else was offering. Plus, its been around for 20+ years!
 
Here are the last moments of the Boston-Philly-DC channel before the looping message of "This channel is no longer available" started to play.

 
Well, many websites have made things you hear on the radio obsolete. You can get traffic from your phone. And weather. And news. And sports. And music.

Radio is still a one button way to get what you want while driving, without having to punch things into your phone when you should be concentrating on the road.
 
My phone,with WAZE on and in android auto mode in the cars will announce to me " heavy traffic on the route 7 miles ahead" , it also warns me of RR crossings, and "Police reported ahead"

That is pretty good tech if you ask me
 
My new car has SiriusXM. I listened to this channel to see how well it covered my area's traffic twice – The day I got the car, and a few days ago, when I just missed traffic on the local AM. It was so far off in accuracy it was worthless. No great loss.
 
itsTheRolyPoly said:
Here are the last moments of the Boston-Philly-DC channel before the looping message of "This channel is no longer available" started to play.

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Thanks for sharing the video. The audio quality was much better than what I heard on my XM portable radio years ago. For some reason, the Traffic & Weather channels were not available on the SiriusXM app. I know that if I were a driver, then I would want to know about the road conditions before I get into my car. However, as others have mentioned, there are other, quicker ways to get the latest traffic updates.
 
Well, that's one preset I can replace with something else. I've used it maybe twice in the six years I've owned the car.
 
Maybe i am spoiled in a big city with all all news station with traffic & weather every 10 minutes but listening to paint dry sounds as interesting to me as continual out of town traffic reports.
 
Larry said:
Maybe i am spoiled in a big city with all all news station with traffic & weather every 10 minutes but listening to paint dry sounds as interesting to me as continual out of town traffic reports.
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I don't think SXM expected anyone to listen to those channels in that manner.
 
Gregg. said:
Well, many websites have made things you hear on the radio obsolete. You can get traffic from your phone. And weather. And news. And sports. And music.

Radio is still a one button way to get what you want while driving, without having to punch things into your phone when you should be concentrating on the road.
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Um, you can start Waze before putting the car in drive. The channels had long been utterly useless.
 
way back when, and this was probably 5 cars ago, when the Boston traffic was on some 21X channel I tried to listen to it, and the way they jumped around the metro area had me shaking my head.... Back in the days when there were 2 traffic reporting services (Smart Routes and Metro Traffic) at least they did the flow of the report in geographic segments.... north shore, south shore, metro west, 93 and Rt 3 north of Boston, 495, mass pike and route 9.... and to this day Total Traffic seems to do their reports so if you are on the north shore you get all that info, then into the center of Boston during the morning Inbound commute and they reverse it on the way home.

The XM traffic was all over the map, the people on 93 south of Boston didn't care about the traffic on 93 North of Boston... they might as well be different planets. To mix them all together made no sense .

My point is it was unlistenable garbage you couldn't get good info from.

WAZE on the other hand, has proven pretty reliable even after Google got their paws on it.

It tells me when there are cops reported ahead.... from the second I get into the two cars I have that are android auto capable, the rest of the time I have it running on the phone as a stand alone.

One service SXM provides that most people are unaware of is aviation weather in North America. It is huge in the aviation industry
 
>>>Um, you can start Waze before putting the car in drive. The channels had long been utterly useless.<<<

I have Waze and Google Maps on my phone. I use it if I'm not sure where I'm going or to map out the best route on a long trip. But it takes a few minutes to do it. Maybe I'm impatient but I don't even fasten my seat belt when I get in the car and put it in gear. I do that as I start my drive.

So how does it work if I'm going someplace I've been numerous times? I have to punch the destination into my phone, even if I'm not expecting traffic to be unusual? And I do all this before I put it in drive? After all, I have to type in the address. That's harder to do than pull a seat belt into place. I don't want to type while driving. Previously, as I was about to get on the highway, I hit Sirius 133 to see if there might be some problem on my route. One button.

Unless I don't know the way to easily use Waze or Google Maps? How can it know where I'm going and tell me there's a problem ahead if I didn't spend a few minutes typing my destination into the service?
 
Gregg. said:
>>>Um, you can start Waze before putting the car in drive. The channels had long been utterly useless.<<<
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Gregg. said:
So how does it work if I'm going someplace I've been numerous times? I have to punch the destination into my phone, even if I'm not expecting traffic to be unusual?
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You have destinations you've been to saved as 'favorites'....and when you get in the car punch 1 button. It then figures in the traffic for that day/ride.
 
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