Point Layer As Source Of Intersections?

[KyleGruber]

ArcGIS Geolocation Team,

Many of our clients will explicitly create a point layer to represent every intersection in their Centerline data.  Is it in any way possible to use a point layer as a source for intersections as a locator role?  Possibly some specific way of using the Point Address role with no house number and optional parameters?

Thanks for your consideration.

Kyle

[JoeBorgione]

I've never quite understood the use of a point layer representing intersections of centerlines since you can geocode an intersection of two (or more) centerlines easily; Elm St & 2nd Ave  or 2nd Ave & Elm St.

That said, my first thought would be to use the points as Point of Interest (POI) role and depending how they are set up, use an alt name table of them as well.  As I recall though, a multi-role locator can only have one given role, so if you have a POI already, you wouldn't be able to use another.  

[ShanaBritt · Accepted solution]

Kyle:

The best solution is to use centerline reference data to build the locator as Joe Borgione‌ stated, which would not require the use of an alternate street name table for the combinations of intersections, unless you actually had alternate street names for the lines in the data. Why do the clients want to build locators based on points that represent intersections over using line data?

Using the POI role would absolutely require an alternate place name table that would be cumbersome to maintain all of the intersection combinations with the different street spellings, order of the streets, abbreviations used for street types, etc... This is not the intended purpose of the POI role and to get the optimal results and enhancements we've made for intersections you would need to use the StreetAddress role.

[KyleGruber]

Joe and Shana,

Thank you, this feedback confirmed the suspicion I already had that there really is no need for an explicit intersections point layer.