Popularity routing fails route calculation almost any time

I recently was cought off guard by bad weather and wanted to abort my ride and take the bus and train back home. Luckily I am from Europe, so there is such service even on the country side. The closest location was a small local airport and the bus was to arrive there soon. I tried to get my 830 to navigate me there. I even found it on theap. But it would always give me route calculation errors. In the end I used my phone Gmaps sent me right up a road that was completely mud. Everything was covered in it and this was my second ride with a new road bike! In the end I forced it to use car navigation and arrived a little too late for the bus connection, having to wait half an hour in an empty terminal.

This was a really bad experience and I then tried to replicate this problem. The last time I always used Komoot routes on the edge. I can't remember when I last relied on the on device navigation. It turned out, that even 10k distant destination and places that I very well know can be reached easily could not get a route. Only very minor navigations worked. Like once around the block.

I contacted Garmin and they asked me many questions. I reset the entire device and reinstalled all maps. Nothing helped. I also removed any connectIQ content. The last question they asked changed the behavior, however: Turning off popularity routing entirely allows me to navigate to all places again.

Have you ever heard about such an issue? iMO when there is no popularity info, Garmin should still be able to calculate something on standard methods. Is the popularity info completely missing on my device? Any idea on how to refresh it?

I use those maps:

INTL Standard Masemap, NR; Garmin Cycle Map Europe East 2024.20, Garmin DEM Map EU 2023.10; Garmin Geocode Map EU 2024.10, Garmin Cycle Map Europe, Central, 2024.20; Garmin Cycle Map Europe, West, 2024.10

Those seem to be standard. I also use the road base setting and ask it to prevent getting me on ferries, toll roads and small paths.

I will keep you updated on my support case.

  • Same here. Got affected both Garmin devices: Edge 830 and Fenix 6 Sapphire. In both cases disabling popularity routes solved the problem. It seems that new map (2024.20) is causing the problem. My girlfriend have Fenix 6S Sapphire with previous map version ane everything works like a charm.

    I've also contacted Garmin support (Polish branch) but their "help" is pretty useless.

    My theory is Garmin new maps, which support reporting obstacles, isn't compatible with older devices. And for Garmin is not worth it to create 2 versions of map (for old and new devices).