topic Re: Geocoding Roundabout Intersections in Data Management Questions

Geocoding Roundabout Intersections

CraigCarsley — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 19:27:02 GMT

I'm having a problem geocoding roundabout intersections in my Streets dataset. I think the reason could be that the two roads actually intersect twice because of the way the roundabout is drawn.

Has anyone come into contact with this? Is there a better way to portray a roundabout intersection that will allow a geolocator to find it?
[ATTACH=CONFIG]32157[/ATTACH]

Re: Geocoding Roundabout Intersections

JoeBorgione — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 15:33:18 GMT

I'm having a problem geocoding roundabout intersections in my Streets dataset. I think the reason could be that the two roads actually intersect twice because of the way the roundabout is drawn.

Has anyone come into contact with this? Is there a better way to portray a roundabout intersection that will allow a geolocator to find it?
[ATTACH=CONFIG]32157[/ATTACH]

Round abouts are pain in the back side for geocoding; my guess is your doing this for a public safety agency for traffic stops or traffic accidents, right?

Here are a couple of suggestions.

1. Don't sweat the small stuff: you are getting a 100% tie on all sides of the round about. pick one and go with it.

2. Drop or rename the street name of all but one the segments of the round about. That way when the intersection is used, it'll hit: MyStreet & MyStreet Roundabout (where MyStreetRoundabout is the only segment of roundabout that is named that way.)

3. Create a point feature class of your round abouts and geocode to them

4. Create an additional feature class of 'streets' that looks like this at a roundabout: _|_

5. If you go with 3 or 4, add them with your main streets to a composite locator, and make them the first to look at

6. Have fun...

Re: Geocoding Roundabout Intersections

CraigCarsley — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 17:26:39 GMT

Thanks for the response, Joe!
I spent a bit more time looking at my roundabouts yesterday, and I think the solution is actually much simpler.
I realized that my streets were intersecting at as endpoint and vertex point, rather than endpoint and endpoint.

I made some changes, and have yet to actually test this solution, but I'm fairly confident this was my problem.
It seems obvious, in hindsight, but sometimes the simple fix is the most elusive!