ArcGIS Pro 3.0.2: What does the “cutoffs” represent in case the “cost” of the “travel mode” in the “network dataset” includes “impendence” and “time c

[JamalNUMAN]

ArcGIS Pro 3.0.2: What does the “cutoffs” represent in case the “cost” of the “travel mode” in the “network dataset” includes “impendence” and “time cost” or “distance cost”?

I couldn’t figure out what the “cutoffs” represents in case the “cost” of the “travel mode” in the “network dataset” includes “impendence” and “time cost” or “distance cost”? Is the cost “distance” or “time” in this case?

[MelindaMorang]

The Cutoffs for Service Area always refers to the impedance (also called "cost") attribute being used by the travel mode that is used for the analysis.  Any network analysis always optimizes the cost attribute specified as the Impedance attribute of the travel mode.  The Time Cost and Distance Cost may be used for secondary things, like accumulating additional measurements and generating directions.  But the Impedance attribute is the important one.

This documentation explains the various travel mode properties, including Impedance, Time Cost, and Distance Cost: https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/analysis/networks/travel-modes.htm 

[JamalNUMAN]

This is a bit perplexing.

How come the values of the “cutoff” represent either the distance or the time while the “cost” considers both the impedance (that could be time or distance) and either “time cost” or “distance cost”?

[MelindaMorang · Accepted solution]

The network analysis calculation (in this case Service Area) only uses the Impedance attribute when optimizing travel through the network, and the Cutoffs parameter only refers to that same Impedance attribute.  The travel mode includes Time Cost and Distance Cost for other things, like populating some values in the driving directions (not relevant here) and accumulating some other values (like showing how much distance was accrued even though time was optimized).  If the travel mode's Impedance attribute has units of time, the Time Cost attribute is the same as the Impedance attribute and cannot be changed.  If the travel mode's Impedance attribute has units of distance, the Distance Cost attribute is the same as the  Impedance attribute and cannot be changed.

I think that for your analysis, you can ignore Time Cost and Distance Cost.  Impedance is the only one that affects how your Service Areas are being calculated, and the Cutoffs refer to the Impedance attribute.

[JamalNUMAN]

Thank you MelindaMorang for the valuable input.

I understand now that the cuffoff unit need to match the impedance unit.

Could you please provide an example in which cases the “Time Cost” is used? How does it affect the cutoff polygons?

[MelindaMorang]

The Time Cost and Distance Cost travel mode properties are primarily used by the Vehicle Routing Problem solver.  Some other solvers include them as an accumulated attribute by default, but in general they don't really do much.

[JamalNUMAN]

Many thanks for the input