Automating bus stop connections with network

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07-13-2016 12:58 PM
ChristopherCowin
New Contributor II

I have a network dataset that contains streets, bus routes and bus stops. The bus stops are not aligned to the street so many don't have "Edge Source"; is there a way to automate creating hundreds of lines connecting the bus stops to the road? Perhaps a buffer tolerance or something?

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6 Replies
DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus

If you have the bus routes, what do you intend to do with the network analyst?  Can you identify what you are trying to do?  I thought intially you were talking abou the stops and search tolerance

What are network analysis objects?—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop

but obviously this isn't the case

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MelindaMorang
Esri Regular Contributor

Hello, Christopher.  I'm not sure how much experience you have in creating network datasets, so please feel free to ask if you need any clarification on any of the following.  Multimodal networks tend to be pretty complicated.

But before I continue, I'll just mention that there is a set of tools you can download to take care of a lot of this automatically if you have GTFS public transit data: http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=0fa52a75d9ba4abcad6b88bb6285fae1

To answer your question, if you want the bus stops to be incorporated as part of your network, you need to do a couple of things:

1) You need to make sure the geometries are connected.  You can use the Snap geoprocessing tool to snap the transit stops to the street features.  But if you need to maintain the transit stops in their original locations (for instance, because they are connecting the transit lines), then it would be best to create a copy of the stops first and snap the copy.  You can then use the Points to Line geoprocessing tool to generate a connector line between the original stop location and the new stop location.  The Points to Line tool can make use of the stop's ID to generate an individual line between each pair of stops with the same ID (the original and the snapped version).

2) In order for your stops and connector lines to actually be connected in the network dataset, you need to add vertices to the street features at the locations of connection.  You can do this automatically by running the Integrate tool with 0 xy tolerance.  Make a back-up copy of your data first because Integrate can do some scary and non-reversible things.

3) In addition to the above, you need to include the stops, snapped stops, and connector lines into your network dataset as network data sources.  Use a connectivity policy of Override for your snapped stops if you have End Point connectivity for your streets.  This ensures that the connector lines connect to the streets at the vertices you created and don't have to snap to end points.

ChristopherCowin
New Contributor II

Thank you for your response!

Sorry It has taken me a while to get back as I was without a computer (or atleast one with ArcGIS) for the last several days.

That all makes perfect sense. I've run into a slight problem with the Point to Line tool, it seems to generate lines from within the feature class so should I be merging the two stations into one class and then running the Point to Line? Also I assume it is the line field (Or is it sort?) that I should be selected to force the lines to only be drawn between the same point?

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MelindaMorang
Esri Regular Contributor

Yes, put the stops and the snapped stops in the same feature class temporarily so you can run Points to Line.  Use the unique ID of the stops for the Line Field parameter (like if you have a stop id value or something).  This makes it so an individual line will be drawn between the stop's original position and its snapped position.

ChristopherCowin
New Contributor II

I've run into another issue, I added the facilities as XY data (park centroids) but when I go to run the Service Area tool it says that the point is unlocated.

I assume this is because most park centroids are not close to a road? Unsure of how to proceed to allow a facility to be a polygon (or an equivalent function). Found this​ question that you responded too, although it doesn't seem an answer was found. I have the same issue as the original asker that I have thousands of parks and can't really perform anything on a manual basis.

Any suggestion would be appreciated.

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MelindaMorang
Esri Regular Contributor

Why won't the method described on the other thread work?  Just create multiple points for each park corresponding to each road intersection with the park and use those as the facilities.

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