topic Re: Points inside Polygons by Time in Public Transit Questions

Points inside Polygons by Time

JesseIsaacson — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 23:21:52 GMT

Hi!

I am fairly new to ArcMap and the newest version my company has full licensing of is ArcMap 10.1. (We also have some of the extra tools licensed)

I have a set of points on the map (pickups and dropoffs), each corresponding to a time field. I also have a set of polygons (bus routes), which all have start and end times. Is it possible for me to find which points fall inside the polygons both geometrically AND by time? I know I could do a spatial join for just geometric, but the time is getting me. Is there any way to do this? Basically I'm trying to find out if these trips are ADA compliant (within 3/4 mile of active bus route).

Thanks!

Re: Points inside Polygons by Time

MelindaMorang — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 17:59:07 GMT

Hello Jesse. This is not the first question I've seen where someone was trying to determine whether paratransit pick-ups and drop-offs fall within the service hours of a bus line. Is this something that people commonly need to do as part of ADA requirements? I know that the federal mandate places the paratransit service area within 3/4 of a mile of fixed-route bus lines, and I'm considering making a tool that will calculate this automatically, but I was unaware of a time of day requirement. Can you point me toward some official documentation explaining that requirement, or otherwise further explain why you need to do this?

Regarding your question: ArcGIS 10.1 isn't supported by Esri anymore, as the product has been retired in favor of newer versions. Here is some documentation about how to use the time slider to filter time-enabled data: Using the Time Slider window—Help | ArcGIS Desktop I don't know whether that was available as far back as 10.1, though.

Here is similar information for ArcGIS Pro: Set the time properties on data—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Desktop

Re: Points inside Polygons by Time

JesseIsaacson — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 18:35:14 GMT

Melinda,

Thanks for the reply! You are correct about the 3/4 mile. A few paragraphs below where your link sent me it says "(e) Hours and days of service. The complementary paratransit service shall be available throughout the same hours and days as the entity's fixed route service." This means that the service area is only within 3/4 of a mile of an ACTIVE bus line. So if that bus route goes from 6am to 9pm, you only have to compliment it by law in a 3/4 mile boundary from 6am to 9pm. That's part of my problem.

I have the time slider and everything set up in 10.1, and all the data is time-enabled. I just need to figure out how to build a data set of all the points that fall in the polygons both geographically and when the polygon is active.

Re: Points inside Polygons by Time

JesseIsaacson — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 21:27:59 GMT

Anyone have any ideas?

Re: Points inside Polygons by Time

MelindaMorang — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 15:18:09 GMT

Here's a suggestion from a colleague:

Do it in two passes:

Pass 1: Spatial Validation – spatial join from “Pickup” points to the “Bus Route” polygons

Each pickup point (in JoinLayer) now knows which bus route it is within
A point not within any active bus route area (ie: null joined-field values) is non-compliant

Pass 2: Temporal Validation – select by attributes to check if the date range is OK

Find the good ones (it’s easier SQL to write)
Select from JoinLayer where
- [PICKUP_TIME] >= [ROUTE_START_TIME]
- AND [PICKUP_TIME] <= [ROUTE_END_TIME]
Invert the selection -> the pickup point is outside its joined bus-route time

ONE BIG LIMITATION though:

Not guaranteed to work with points inside multiple (overlapping) bus route polygons
- The joined bus route time-frame may not comply, but another one might
- Spatial join only gives you one result…
Suggestion:
- Run the above
- For the ‘failures’, identify pickup points that are in multiple bus routes
- Mark these as “maybe’s”
- Handle them some other way (if only a few, maybe manually?)