INTERSECTION LOCATOR

[MitchellWiniecki]

Is this even possible? I've been reading the forums for several days now and no one has an answer.  I want to create an intersection locator based on street centerline data.  Thought using the Dual Range style would be best because my centerline data included all the necessary fields but no go.
Also have intersection point data that included individual street names.  The only way that I've read (so far) to make this work is to concatenate the street name field at each intersection for each point so that your table data will read "50TH & FRANCE", and then would need another point at the same location with attribute reading "FRANCE & 50TH".  So for a 4 way intersection you would need 2 points in order to locate the intersection properly. Obviously I'm not going to do that as it would take me 6 months. 

ARE THERE ANY ANSWERS OUT THERE?  I FEEL LIKE THIS SHOULD NOT BE SO DAMN COMPLICATED!

[JoeBorgione]

Is this even possible? I've been reading the forums for several days now and no one has an answer.  I want to create an intersection locator based on street centerline data.  Thought using the Dual Range style would be best because my centerline data included all the necessary fields but no go.
Also have intersection point data that included individual street names.  The only way that I've read (so far) to make this work is to concatenate the street name field at each intersection for each point so that your table data will read "50TH & FRANCE", and then would need another point at the same location with attribute reading "FRANCE & 50TH".  So for a 4 way intersection you would need 2 points in order to locate the intersection properly. Obviously I'm not going to do that as it would take me 6 months. 

ARE THERE ANY ANSWERS OUT THERE?  I FEEL LIKE THIS SHOULD NOT BE SO DAMN COMPLICATED!

Push back away from the desk and take a deep breath; no it's not so d*** complicated. 

The problem with intersections is they are sensitive to how you set up your locators.  If you specify Prefix Direction, Street Name, Suffix/Type, it wants you to enter the intersection like this:

E 50th ST & N FRANCE AVE  (or whatever...)

If you want to take shortcuts and leave the extra data off you could try creating aliases of your street names and use the US Streets w/ Alias table locator style.  Or alternatively, composite several US Streets locators in sequence that leave  the various components un-checked.  Be sure to specify  intersection symbols you want to use like : &, AND, @, |, etc; those are pretty standard but you can use what ever you want, so long it's specified in the list.

Hope this helps.

[MitchellWiniecki]

Yea I've done all that in past trials and still no go. Anything else?

[TimWitt]

Mitchell,

after your create your dual range address locator, make sure to right click your locator in ArcCatalog ->Properties -> Geocoding options

There set "Match without house number" to "Yes" and set "Match with no zones" to "Yes".

Now open a fresh MXD, if you have that locator already in use, remove it and then re-add it. If it is not in your list of locators just add it and use it. Now you should be able to find intersections.

Tim

[MitchellWiniecki]

Mitchell,

after your create your dual range address locator, make sure to right click your locator in ArcCatalog ->Properties -> Geocoding options

There set "Match without house number" to "Yes" and set "Match with no zones" to "Yes".

Now open a fresh MXD, if you have that locator already in use, remove it and then re-add it. If it is not in your list of locators just add it and use it. Now you should be able to find intersections.

Tim

Spot on Tim, thanks for the help.  These changes allowed me to successfully create an Intersection locator using street centerline data.

[ChuckHarris]

I'm struggling with this same issue of locating intersections.  I have a US Streets with AltNames locator and what I find is that the AltNames table is interfering with locating intersections.  Example: There is a stretch of road that has a "main name" - JAMES MADISON HIGHWAY, but also has 3 or 4 aliases: "US-15", "US-29", "US-17", etc. All of these US routes run together over this stretch of road.  But at some point they diverge and US-17 splits off.  So I'd like to be able to locate the intersection of US-15 and US-17 and have it find this place where US-17 splits off.  Instead, I get 166 instances of an "intersection" of US-15 and US-17, each with a match score of 100.  They occur at the endpoint of every segment of JAMES MADISON HIGHWAY that has an altname of US-15 and US-17.  So fishing through all these "false positives" to find the real intersection is next to impossible.  Then try to automate that.  It's a big challenge.

Couple of other bones to pick regarding this.  The data I'm using to try and find intersections doesn't actually intersect at interchanges.  The connection is made via a ramp segment that has no name.  This is great for navigation, but I can't find the intersection of I-95 and I-64 because they don't actually intersect in the data.  But it is common to refer to such interchanges and say "go to 95 and 64 and bear right" for example.  So my locator can't find it, but my users will be asked to go there frequently.

Finally, there's a tradeoff to make between finding intersections and getting "false positives" when address searching.  In my data many of the segments where streets intersect have no address ranges.  So if I include these in my locator, the search for "0 MIDLOTHIAN TURNPIKE" I'll get dozens of 100 score returns all along the length of this highway, at the start of any segment that doesn't have an address range.  But if I take these segments out of the reference data and build a locator, then I can't find the intersections of many streets that actually exist.  All becuase the data doesn't have ranges at the intersection location.

Intersections and geocoding are really powerful and it is fun to develop locators to meet users' needs, but some of the challenges are rather daunting.  If anyone has solutions or suggestions to my problems, I'd love to hear it.  And bonus 5 points if you can tell me where I live based on this post!  🙂  Thanks for reading.

[JoeBorgione]

This is great for navigation, but I can't find the intersection of I-95 and I-64 because they don't actually intersect in the data. But it is common to refer to such interchanges and say "go to 95 and 64 and bear right" for example. So my locator can't find it, but my users will be asked to go there frequently.

For these I use a point locator.

[ChuckHarris]

Can you give me some tips on how to generate the data for the point locator, please?  I've seen the bit about putting street1 @ street2 in a single field, but that's giving me some pause because of the complexity of handling all the combinations required.  Thanks for the reply!

[JoeBorgione]

Can you give me some tips on how to generate the data for the point locator, please?  I've seen the bit about putting street1 @ street2 in a single field, but that's giving me some pause because of the complexity of handling all the combinations required.  Thanks for the reply!

If you are asking about freeways, I don't do anything too sexy; just roll up my sleeves and start adding points where I want them.  Ramps that connect Freeways to Freeways are typically known as Fly Overs, so in the data I manage each of those points follow the convention of FO <Freeway1> TO <Freeway2>.  FO I 15 SB to I 80 EB for example.  You can name them what ever fits your needs.  I do something similar for On Ramps and Off Ramps: ON RAMP <CrossStreet> <FreewayName>

[RossFindlay]

Wondering if someone can assist? I am using the Dual Range locator type and the intersection query is working. However streets named with numeric values ,(1 ST SW @ 6 AV SW) take up to 2 minutes to verify, whereas Alpha named streets ( TUSCANY DR NW @ NOSE HILL BLVD NW) take seconds. Is there some way I can enhance the performance for these numbered street names, this is too long for our requirements.