Intermodal Network Construction

[BenKeller2]

I am creating an intermodal network for North America, and have rail, road, intermodal facilities, and nodes for both rail and road. I made sure my connectivity was correct so that the facilities were connected to both rail and road. As of right now my only parameters, that were made by the too not me, are miles and oneway. Are there any others that I should be creating or is that sufficient to start. Unfortunately I do not have a turn class, but my main analysis is basically visualizing where rail cars are leaving the network to travel on road, and where they are returning to rail. Also, I do not need to snap my intermodal facilities to line segments correct? Obviously most facilities span a large distance and are not directly on top of the rail or road. Any extra help or insight would be great.
Here is the intermodal network I am currently using minus the waterways:

http://cta.ornl.gov/transnet/Intermodal_Network.html

Thanks,
Ben

[BenKeller2]

I ended up creating the network dataset as is, but the problem is that my facilities that allow travel between rail and road are not connected to edges of the network. I have around 1200 points so manually connecting them with lines is not an option. Also they each are specified as either one way terminal or two way terminals, meaning you could go from rail to road, road to rail, or both. Any help with setting a parameter for this would be amazing, I am assuming I would have to rebuild my network though.


Thanks
Ben

[RamB]

I propose the following:

Assuming, intermodal facilities are point features. Use the "nearest" tool on intermodal facility, once each for rail and road. Later combine this table, such that you have a point feature table that has facility ID, road node ID (nearest to facility) , rail node ID (nearest to facility).  Get coordinates of these three sets of nodes.

Following the procedure on this page, prepare a text file to create lines. Later use the "ascii/ text to feature tool" to create your connections (i would call them dummy, as they dont exist in reality)

You next question on one-ways and two ways is no different than those in network analyst tutorial for multimodal networks. When you read tram in the tutorial think about it as rail 🙂


regards,

[BenKeller2]

Thank you very much! I am working with the near tool, and ArcMap crashes sometimes, but that might be because I have too much data. Do I have to rebuild my network dataset to establish the "dummy lines" as connections?

[BenKeller2]

I have the lines created, but there is no node at the end points of my line segments, so it still thinks there is no connection

[RamB]

Yes, you must have nodes. Without nodes you cannot have dummy lines, so that surprises me. In case you do not have nodes, but you somehow (strangely) have the dummy lines, use planarize tool to break your highway line segments at the point that they would intersect with dummy lines. Do the same on the other side to railways lines.

Once you have nodes on highways and railways and for the facilities, you must rebuild your network.

regards,

[RamB]

I am assuming you have basic knowledge of building networks in Arcgis, if not, please try the tutorials first. it will help you a great deal.

kind regards,

[BenKeller2]

I restarted, so now I have the original point, other data, and both rail and road coordinates. I want to create the lines as you said, but from the text file is difficult because I have over two thousand points and to edit the text file into that vertical format will be very time consuming. There is no way to create a line from the original point to other XY coordinates in an attribute table? That seems very simple but yet I have not found it.

[BenKeller2]

This is what I have....

[JaySandhu]

Have you looked at the GP tool XY to Line?
http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//0017000000tv000000

Jay Sandhu