Stop locations snapped to wrong side of waterbody instead of nearest accessible road segment

Question

Hello everyone, I've an issue as below.

When stops are located for the route analysis, the network location snapping process attaches stop points to road centerlines on the opposite side of a waterbody (canal).
The correct snap locations should be the nearest accessible road segments on the same bank, as indicated by the red arrows in the image.

However, ArcGIS Pro’s network location assignment ignores the presence of the canal polygon and only uses geometric proximity within the search tolerance.
As a result, stops that visually appear on one side of the canal are incorrectly snapped to the opposite bank, producing an invalid route path that crosses the water where no bridge exists.

Figure:
figure

Question:
Is there any recommended method or best practice to ensure that stops snap only to road segments on the correct (accessible) side of a waterbody?

Thanks in advance for a help.

TossapolP · Answer

Hello, Thanks for the suggestion.

In my case, the stop points represent real-world water meter assets that already have fixed ground coordinates — they can’t be moved or re-geocoded.
The issue is not point accuracy but rather that, during the Add Locations process, ArcGIS Pro snaps these fixed points to the nearest road segment across a canal or river, since the locating algorithm ignores waterbody polygons and only considers distance within the search tolerance.

This behavior is manageable for small datasets, but my production data includes hundreds of thousands of water meters across the entire country, many of which are located near canals or rivers.
Because of this, manual correction or case-by-case filtering isn’t feasible.

Ideally, I need a workflow or tool option that would let the Add Locations or Calculate Locations step respect physical barriers or at least restrict eligible network edges to the same side of a waterbody — for example, by spatial filtering, pre-classification, or an advanced query.

Is there any recommended best practice for handling large-scale fixed asset datasets like this where water features cause incorrect snap locations?

Best regards.

Melinda Morang · Answer

The Network Analyst locating process doesn't have any knowledge of external features like your canals, so it will always locate points on the closest non-restricted network edge, even if it's on the wrong side of the canal.

How did you generate the points in the first place?  If you geocoded them from addresses using the World Geocoding Service or a locator that includes the routing location in addition to the rooftop location, try geocoding them again using the routing location.  That should move the points closer to the correct street or the driveway location for the property rather than the rooftop center, which may be closer to a different street.

Alternatively, you could try using a search query when running Add Locations or Calculate Locations to more accurately match the point to the correct street.  Unfortunately, you can only use a single query for the entire dataset, so this might only work on a case-by-case basis.