Point to Nearest Polygon

[MatthewNickeson]

I have a map with a layer of point locations throughout the US and a layer of polygon sectors. All of the US is contained within a sector. I am trying to find the closest polygon to each location by driving distance and driving time. I haven't been able to find the functionality that will allow this analysis since each location is contained within a polygon. Does anyone have any insights whether this is possible and if it is how it could be done?

[MatthewNickeson]

I have been thinking about my problem and believe that your approach would be the best approach. I was hoping you could provide a little guidance as to how I would treat the roads as lines. This would be hundreds of thousands of points to it is obviously not able to be done by hand. 

[XanderBakker]

Some pointer to get you started:

• Convert the polygons to polylines using Feature To Line—Help | ArcGIS Desktop (Advanced license required)
• Intersect the polyline outlines of the polygons with the road (or make a selection of the roads that intersect first to speed up the process of intersection) using Intersect—Help | ArcGIS Desktop make sure to use lines as input and points as output (see: How Intersect works—Help | ArcGIS Desktop )
• The resulting points should still have a reference of the original polygons used to create them. 
• Then probably do the Closest facility analysis—Help | ArcGIS Desktop  to see which point (read polygon is the nearest).

[MatthewNickeson]

Thank you everyone, you have all been awesome! I’ll give your suggestion a go tomorrow. I’m only 3 weeks into my arcGIS experience and I really appreciate the community’s willingness to help.

[RebeccaStrauch__GISP]

Matthew, make sure to come back to thus thread and mark one answer as correct, and others as helpful to get to that point.  That will help other in the future and will close out the thread.  A summary is always nice too.  Interesting topic/problem.

[MatthewNickeson]

Thank you Xander and Dan, your suggestions are very helpful. I apologize for what is probably a novice question but I'm not sure how to get the roads as an input feature to the intersect. I should clarify that I have Pro Advanced with Spatial Analyst but not Network Analyst. I was incorrect when I stated that earlier. I would prefer not to purchase the Network Analyst extension but can if needed.

[XanderBakker]

You can download open data like: USGS National Transportation Dataset (NTD) Downloadable Data Collection - FileGDB - Data.gov 

[XanderBakker]

When the distance between the large polygon and the points of interest is high, you could select only the highways the cross the border of the polygon to simplify the analysis, since the route will most likely use main roads to get to the point. In that case there would be no need to include the smaller road in the process to define the points that represent the intersections between roads and the polygon border.

[JakeSkinner]

Hi Matthew,

If you have an ArcGIS Desktop license you will have an ArcGIS Online subscription.  Not sure if you, or anyone in your organization, has activated this, but if so you can use the Find Nearest analysis tool.  You can specify Drive Times as a the measurement.

Note:  This tools will use credits.  With 3,500 points you will be charged 1,750 credits to perform this analysis.

[MatthewNickeson]

That was my initial inclination to try but it results in an error. The program indicates that the nearest location field must be a point for driving distance when I attempt to run it as such. My nearest location is a polygon which is the crux of my issue.

[XanderBakker]

How large is the polygon and what does it represent?