create point shapefile of street intersections from polyline - ArcEditor

[MichaelCatsos]

I'm trying to create a point shapefile of street intersections in downtown Phoenix, somehow deriving the points from a lone street centerline layer. I have tried extracting polyline nodes to points, but nodes do not exist at all of the necessary intersections. Intersect-related solutions don't seem to be any help since I am only working with one layer.

I'm not experienced enough to understand most scripting. Is there any procedure to split polyline features into segments between each intersection? After that I could extract the nodes, then turn them into points.

Another option I have explored is creating a small buffer around the polyline features. Theoretically, the points where the buffers around each segment overlap represent the intersections. This method is more inclusive, including all the potential intersections, but I can not figure out how to "overlay" the buffer with itself. Is there some way to use overlay to extract the small polygons where the individual buffered segments overlap, even though they are all in the same layer?

[JohnSobetzer]

I've used Hawth's Analysis Tools (free) to produce points at line intersections in the same layer, but I think it creates duplicates at each location which I removed by running a clean.  That was many years ago.  ETGeowizards has a Renode Wizard that from the help says it would analyze a line layer and it could create points representing the regular nodes where two lines intersect but it isn't one of the free tools.

[AlexeyTereshenkov]

Hi,

Could creating a geometric network solve the problem? (ArcCatalog > Geodatabase > Feature dataset > Geometric network). Junctions will be created automatically at the intersections of the streets.

[BRaffel]

You could use the Planarize tool - this will break all of the lines where they intersect.

[JoshuaDamron]

Alexey,
  Thank you for your post! 

Great idea, I just created a geometric network to place points at all of our street intersections.  Quick and easy, had to do a little cleanup work as it placed points in all the cul-de-sac's as well.  Now to complete my count on how many STOP signs we have...

I like it when I can place a thousand points in a few seconds 🙂

-Joshua

[AlexeyTereshenkov]

Hi Joshua,

Glad it worked out well for you. Geometric networks are indeed very good! But if you work with street data extensively, I encourage you to take a look at the Network Analyst geoprocessing tools - we have got quite a few new useful ones (ArcGIS 10). What's more, you can define your connectivity rules for your streets (end vertex or any vertex) and obtain system junctions that will get created upon the build of the network.

Consider using Topology toolbar as BRaffel mentioned as well! 🙂

[RickEhlin__Jr]

Is there someway to transfer the centerline names to a intersection_name field in the point file?

[DarrenWiens2]

I just wanted to point out that you absolutely can run the intersect tool with only one input, select point as output type, and get the intersections.

[AlexeyTereshenkov]

Thank you very much for pointing this out, I have totally missed this!

However, I believe that creating a geometric network in the case of having billions of links is still more efficient time-wise. After editing the underlying data, to get the new points of intersection is a matter of rebuilding network, but when running the Intersection tool one is supposed to run the whole streets layer as the input.

[RickEhlin__Jr]

It looks like we've established how to get the point file (intersections) created, but that file has no usable data in it.  How would you go about getting the street names that intersect into the intersection file?  I can't find an automated solution to this...???