Remove "overlapping" lines

[CharlesCzajkowski]

I am working on a project that is combining road layers from several sources. Many of the roads appear to overlap, but they are actually feet and sometime inches away from one another, so the "Must not overlap" topology does no catch them. Anyone have any ideas how I can attack this problem? Is there some kind of tool or script that can help?

[AshleyMott]

Is there sufficient attribution to attack this problem by value?

[CharlesCzajkowski]

No, the attributes area all a mess. Some roads have attributes x,y,z. some x,z. some have no data at all other than segment length. Some streets are spelled several different ways even within the same data-set, so it is impossible to query unique records or search for "Oak WY" for example, because another segment of that road may be "Oak Way." It is a real clusterfluff...

[DarrenWiens2]

It sounds like it's going to be painful no matter what you do, but you might find some inspiration with the Snap tool (make a copy first).

[JohnSobetzer]

Without knowing what you need to retain or how your data looks,  I can't go much further than suggest checking out the following which favors shapes over attributes.  First though might be to see if the Integrate tool (you might have to vary the cluster tolerance too see what works, do this on copies to avoid messing up your original data) can fix things.  Planarize.  Second thought might be to take your most accurate road layer and copy it into a new feature class.  Buffer it with squared edges and then use that to erase from your next favored roads layer.  Select the remaining roads in that layer and copy and paste them into the new layer.  Repeat process until you've done them all.  You might be able to use a select by location instead of buffer to get the overlapping, then switch the selection before adding to the new layer.  You would still have to go back to make sure all the roads are continuous where different layers meet, but perhaps running the Integrate tool at this point can get most of those.  Third thought would be to check out this interesting thread on averaging lines if the accuracy of the different layers is all over the place: http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/26757-quot-Averaging-quot-lines?highlight=GPS+averaging+lines

[CharlesCzajkowski]

"Buffer it with squared edges and then use that to erase from your next favored roads layer."

Is there anything I can do for roads that are in the same layer as one another. I inherited this project from a student intern and some of the original roads data that is being added to has these "overlap" problems.

[CharlesCzajkowski]

--Oh, and I'm using Arc 9.3 in case that changes things. Thanks for the help ya'll...

[DarrenWiens2]

You can use one of my favourite tools, Feature to Line, to make a lot of useful changes to road files. Set the XY Tolerance as low as possible, while still making the changes you want.