topic Re: Service Network Area Polygons are longer than their distance limit in ArcGIS Network Analyst Questions

Question

I want to check the percentage of a city that is accessible to a forest (in green in the image) within a 2 km range from its entry points (purple dots). My first approach consists in creating buffers with a 2 km radio (blue circles) from the entry points. For a more realistic one, I am using Service Network Areas (ArcGIS 10.7) to use the network of streets of the city with the same distance limit (orange polygon). I got the network of streets of the city from openstreetmap and then I cleared it from rivers, streams, electric lines, railways and such. From the polyline shape I created a new network Dataset with only length in meters as attribute, and then created a New Service Area and loaded the 10 entry points of the forest as facilities. For the polygon creation I am merging the polygons and not trimming them (I'm also using Disk as overlap, even though I don't think this is important in my case, since I have only one break). The default break is 2000 m, which is the limit I defined for my study.

As you can see in the image, the maximum distance that could be covered should be the direct approach using the blue circles buffers. Nevertheless, the Network Service Area exceeds this maximum direct distance on some areas, reaching a distance of 2600 m from the entry points, for example. Whereas the limits of the Network Service Area polygon should be shorter than the direct approach, since the distance is being measured by using the network of streets. I am new in using this tool, therefore I don't know if I am overlooking something or making a mistake in my procedures.

I would greatly appreciate your help and comments.

Cheers,