Can I create a polyline with one long segment and three shorter underlying segments?

[JamieNeils]

We currently have a street centerline polyline feature class where the street segments correspond to our pavement management database. Each segment has a unique ID that matches a record tracking pavement type/year. Segment breaks occur at intersections, but can also occur mid-block if a subdivision was built in multiple additions. We would like to start adding Left From/To and Right From/To fields to the street centerline feature class for geocoding purposes. I would like to be able to have a street segment start at an intersection and end at an intersection for address coding, but still keep the underlying multiple segments that correspond to the breaks in the pavement management database. Is there an easy way to do this? Do I need to have two seperate line files or is there way to have this in one feature class?

[TimWitt]

Jamie,

You would have to have 2 files for that.

I would just keep the file as it is and add the from/to's. Our street centerline is like yours, meaning it isn't always a full line between intersection, and our geocoder works just fine.

Tim

[RichardFairhurst · Accepted solution]

We currently have a street centerline polyline feature class where the street segments correspond to our pavement management database. Each segment has a unique ID that matches a record tracking pavement type/year. Segment breaks occur at intersections, but can also occur mid-block if a subdivision was built in multiple additions. We would like to start adding Left From/To and Right From/To fields to the street centerline feature class for geocoding purposes. I would like to be able to have a street segment start at an intersection and end at an intersection for address coding, but still keep the underlying multiple segments that correspond to the breaks in the pavement management database. Is there an easy way to do this? Do I need to have two seperate line files or is there way to have this in one feature class?

There is no easy way to do this in a single layer.  There is no one approach that fits everybody's needs.  However, in general address range management is a pain to create and maintain when the road network is being divided by other attributes unrelated to the street network layout.  That is because they are picky about digitized direction of the lines and there is no support for automating address interpolations when they split.  It is best to create a clean network by using the Dissolve tool on the Centerline Street Names to combine all roadways segments with touching ends and then use the Planarize edit tool to divide them at every intersection.  Then assign your ranges.

Linear Referencing is what I use for pavement management, since each segment typically extends through multiple intersections anyway.  I use the Create Route tool create an undivided road covering its entire length derived from the Centerline network using the Create Routes tool.  The tool assigns measure to the entire road length.  I create intersection points with measure values.  Then I create a table of every street name pair to act as a join field to my pavement management segments based on their intersection descriptions and transfer the intersection RouteID and measure for each limit.  Limit offsets from intersections are created simply by adding or subtracting the offset distance from the intersection measure associate with a limit.  Then I make an Route Event Layer of the Pavement Management features and export them to a real feature class for publication.

Look into Linear Referencing as a way to make each attribute much easier to segment separately and later combine together.

[JoshWhite]

Richard,

Do you know of a good resource center for this.  I'm struggling to find examples of this and don't really know where to look.  I found the help section for linear referencing but am surprised that I can't seem to locate a "community" for this.  Maybe I should just create a test geodatabase and try to dive in with the help pages.  I'm not using a pavement management software so I will have to build everything from scratch using my existing file, similar to the other post you replied to me in.

[RichardFairhurst]

My own LR system has evolved over several years.  I only maintain a single Centerline layer for all geometry.  These are simple polylines with no LR capabilities.

To extend my options to use LR I started by adding fields to my Centerlines to define Route_Names for my Centerlines.  If you have a numbering pattern in your state you can use that for the route names.  I did not so my Route_Names are derived from human readable strings, starting with the street name.

My jurisdiction is a County, where the same street name may occur in widely separated parts of the County that have no potential operational relationship to each other.  So initally the Route_Name was the street name combined with an area plan abbreviation from my general plan.  In some cases I found more than 1 operational segment with this name pattern so I added a three character string that could randomly distinguish them, favoring my own jurisdiction to get the version without a random number.  This random number would be used to break off small branching centerlines that messed up the main route stationing geometry into their own routes.

I used the Create Routes tool to build these routes (I recommend using the Lower Left corner as a default priority to create stationing from west to east or south to north like engineers use).  I found I had to build my entire route network in phases and then append it all together to avoid overtaxing the Create Route tool.  I also found that some routes could not be built from the Lower Left corner, since they were diagonal in the wrong direction and the behavior of that setting becomes unpredictable in those cases.  So I added a Build_Priority field and assigned LL, UL, LR, or UR values so that these Centerlines would be selected in separate groups for use wit the Create Route tool and appended together.

Roads that have their DOTS split and combine in different parts have to be built in a different process.  I have two more fields that separate North or West DOTs from South or East DOTs.    Combined portions get both fields filled in and split portions get one field filled in.  The names include the DOT and a single digit number appended to the Route_Name I described above, so for example I could have a Centerline segment that combines both DOTs with both "I-10 RIVER 001 WB0" and "I-10 RIVER 001 EB0" as the two DOT based Route names that would use the geometry.  These are built with at least 2 separate runs of the Create Route tool.  They have a different schema from my other routes so I use the Merge tool to integrate them.

All of this is scripted and runs weekly to recreate my entire Route Network from my underlying Centerlines.  These routes are the LR skeleton.  If I switch over to Roads and Highways that process will change.  I would upload my current routes and then have to develop a route maintenance process would integrate with the Centerline change process.

[JamieNeils]

Thank you for the responses, my next step is to look into linear referencing!

[Zeke]

One thing to be careful of when using linear referencing over a whole road length - 911 may require segments broken at intersections. This is for emergency dispatch. We had to break all our lines at intersections at my old job for this reason. Maybe this isn't a requirement for all 911 systems, but it was for ours.

[RichardFairhurst]

One thing to be careful of when using linear referencing over a whole road length - 911 may require segments broken at intersections. This is for emergency dispatch. We had to break all our lines at intersections at my old job for this reason. Maybe this isn't a requirement for all 911 systems, but it was for ours.

All intersections would be present in the 911 layer of centerlines with address ranges.  The routes are a derivative from that layer.  Linear Referencing on the routes is for data like pavement management which has no direct relationship to the 911 system or address ranges.