How transpose a point on a line

[MicolGenazzi]

Hello,I need to transpose points on a line, how do I do that? Which tools should I use?

More precisely, my problem is this. I have points taken with the GPS (then converted into shapefiles) that are on a road or a meadow some 10 metres from a river, and I want to move these points from the road to the nearest point on the river.

I try to first divide the river line into points, with an equal distance of 0.5 m, using the Point Along Line tool. And my next step was using the Near tool to transpose the points on the roads to the new points created on the river line, but it did not give me the result I wanted. Where am I going wrong?

So more specifically my points represent the beavers (red dots), which I monitored during several nights from a road or a meadow. And the blue line represents the river where the beavers actually are. Now I need to transpose the points to the river. The results I got in the picture using the Near tool, where the yellow points represent the red points translated to the river. 

Now my question is, why the green circled points aren't where I drew the green point (that should be the closest points-river distance) but are instead where I drew the orange line?

I'll be so grateful if someone can solve this problem (: Thanks

[JohannesBierer]

Is this helpful?

https://support.esri.com/en-us/knowledge-base/how-to-snap-point-features-to-a-line-feature-000021426

[MicolGenazzi]

Thanks for your reply but I already try that, is exactly what I did by using the Near tool. I managed to move my points on the line but it looks like it's actually not moving my points on the nearest place on the line. 

I don't know what others tools can I try

[JohannesBierer]

I think it should work with the near tool?

Maybe you can try spatial join (Closest), buffer with the closest distance and intersect as proposed here:

https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/231108/workaround-near-analysis-tool-in-arcgis-10-2-2-for-de...

[JohannesBierer]

I've tested the near tool, it works in my case (only tested 10 points)? There must be a mistake in your wokflow? For example you don't need to convert the line to points? Do the feature classes have the same coordinate system?

[KimOllivier]

I agree with @JohannesBierer that you must not divide up the river, leave it as a line. The Near tool find the perpendicular distance and the xy point at the intersection of the river as attributes which you can then use.