Creating an LRS intersection class

Esri Roads and Highways provides the functionality to create intersection point features at the junction of the network and other line or polygon features, such as county boundaries, town boundaries, railroads, and hydrological features. The resulting intersection feature class also supports the time effectiveness of the route.

Intersection features can be used in the Roadway Characteristics Editor to provide measures based on intersection reference offset for creating new event records. To learn more, see Adding linear events to a route from a reference offset.

Creating an LRS intersection class

Use the following procedure to create an intersection feature class.

Steps:

1. Start ArcMap and browse to your data folder in the Catalog window.
2. Right-click the LRS Network and click New > LRS Intersection Class.

   The ALRS Intersection Class Setup wizard appears.

3. Click Next.

   The General Properties dialog box appears.

4. Provide a name for the new intersection class.
5. Select the parent network for the intersection class.
6. Click Next.

   The Intersection Inputs dialog box appears.

7. Select a field from the route network layer that provides the description of the route, such as STREET_NAME.

   This value is used in the naming of the intersection. The column that provides a name for the intersection is populated based on concatenating this field value with another field value from the intersecting feature. You can select any field in the data model for the network for the route name or the route's description.

8. Select a cluster tolerance (in feet) for the intersection.

   This is the maximum distance separating the route features from the input layers that can be termed as intersecting. The default cluster tolerance for the intersection is 0 feet.

9. Check the box if you want to add a measure column to the intersection feature class.
10. Click the Add Data button to select and add a polyline or polygon feature class.
You can add more than one feature class to participate in the intersection class. The intersections are generated with references to the route network. This means each participating feature class in the intersection is paired separately with the parent route network. No intersections are generated for the intersections found between the added feature classes, only between routes and the added features. Examples of feature classes that could be added for route intersections include county boundaries, railroads, and streams.
11. Select the ID field for the input intersecting feature class.

    The ID field is used to uniquely identify the feature that intersects with the route and is copied into a field for the intersection record in the intersection feature class. This ID field is used to help Esri Roads and Highways in the management and updating of intersection locations.

12. Select the description field from the intersecting feature class that provides the description, such as town or county name of the intersecting feature.

    This value is used in the naming of the intersection and to populate a column that provides a name for the intersection based on concatenating this field value with another field value from the network feature.

13. Provide a name separator for the intersection, such as AND, INTERSECT, +, or |.
This separator is added between the route name and the intersecting feature name in the output table, for example, Park St AND Suffolk, Park St INTERSECT Suffolk, Park St + Suffolk, or Park St | Suffolk, where Park St is the route name and Suffolk is the county name.
14. Click Finish.

    The intersection class is now created. The intersections are created only at those locations where the routes intersect the input features.

    Note:

    • If a message appears that is related to acquiring locks, the need to reconcile, or not being able to acquire locks, and so on, then Roads and Highways conflict prevention is enabled. For more information about these messages, see Conflict prevention in Roads and Highways for Desktop.

    • If you have enabled conflict prevention, then all the routes in the participating networks need to be locked. This is required to produce the intersections from the most up-to-date version of the routes.
    • If you are working in the lock root version, then all the locks acquired by the tool to create the intersections will be released automatically.
    • If you are working in a child version, then all the locks acquired by the tool to create the intersections will remain.

    Output intersection class

    Attribute table for the intersection class

    Note:

    Here is the description of fields created in the intersection feature class. If you are registering an existing intersection feature class to the LRS, then use this table as a guide for the field types required to do so.

    Field	Data Type	Length	Is Nullable	Description
    IntersectionId	GUID or String	Greater than 38 for string field	Yes	An autogenerated field providing a unique ID for each intersection
    IntersectionName	String	255	Yes	A concatenated field showing the descriptors for the route and the intersecting feature
    RouteId	String	255	Yes	Shows the route ID for the route network
    FeatureId	String	100	Yes	Shows the ID for the intersecting feature
    FeatureClassName	String	150	Yes	Shows the name of the feature class that has participated in the intersection
    FromDate	Date		Yes	Shows the from date of the route
    ToDate	Date		Yes	Shows the to date of the route
    Measure	Double		Yes	The measure on the base route at the point of intersection

Creating an LRS intersection class using the same route network

You can also generate intersection points from a single route network at the locations where two routes meet or cross each other. This can be accomplished by adding the route layer as an intersection feature class in step 9 of the previous section.

Generating intersections within a route network