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

[RamB]

Jay has given a good solution. i personally transfer the table to excel and write macros. Sure it cannot be a manual process 🙂
Ask around your workplace, I am sure there should be a few people who write macros in excel.

regards,

[BenKeller2]

Thanks a lot for you help along the way here! I ended up doing some geoprocessing and created some new ID fields and a master field and made multiple XY event layers and appended them together followed by the point to line tool with my sort field. I have it all built now with my facility nodes snapped to rail and road and the connectivity set to both rail and road, and the nodes set to override. When I create a test route it still says there is no route between the two? Do I need to create a node for both rail and road classes at the intersection of the transfer edges as well? I will try that out as my next step!

[BenKeller2]

oops forgot my attachment.....

[RamB]

Yes, you are going in the right direction 🙂 . You need nodes, then define their connectivity while building the network.

regards,

[BenKeller2]

So I got it to work but not correctly. When I test to see if it travels across modes I just select a point on each side of the transfer lines on road and rail. The problem is it routes across the entire country to another facility and then all the way back to the second point. I think it is doing this because the facility actually connects to the end of a rail segment. I have checked my connectivity and made sure my points are snapped also. I am not sure what to look at now. Good news it that it is at least connecting between both modes, bad news is that it is only at one facility.

[RamB]

This is because of end-point connectivity and because your lines are not split where they should be. Solution, split lines where ever is necessary eg., at points where you think rail wagons switch lines (criss-cross) similarly with roads.

I do not understand your third picture. the route does not seem to be using the transfer link

[BenKeller2]

All three pictures are of the same route. The third picture is just the two points I used to test the connection and it rerouted across the map. I will check my connections again, and I made sure to use the Split Line at Intersection tool. They should be split but checking again does not hurt.

Thank You

[BenKeller2]

For some reason the Split Line at Point tool does not split all the rail segments at the point where the transfer edges meet the rail edge. Only some of them have a vertex created, and others are off by a meter or less and obviously the connection is not made at those nodes.

[BenKeller2]

After measuring how far off the break is from the point, at 1:1 scale, it is literally inches. I understand it probably is just an error in the split line at point tool because it is so minimal especially at the large scale I typically work at. Any suggestions as to how to fix it?

[BenKeller2]

Does ArcCatalog reproject all the data after it builds the network dataset? I am confused as to how some vertices where I split at the point are no longer coinciding and some are? I have repeated the steps again, and the same thing happened.