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?

[MikeHargreaves]

Sure Lee,

It seemed like something many folks would need to do.  And many others contributed.

Mike

[LukeAllen1]

Mike, could you share the python code for splitting the streets out separately rather than all be concatenated with the & symbol? - my python skills are still in the 'early' stage

[MikeHargreaves]

Luke, don't remember, though someone did put some array stuff up there.  If you wanted to do manually, create enough fields for each street, and maybe a working field or two.  Use Field Calculator with vb as parser and use InStr() to find location of 1st & and put that value into an integer working field (len).  Then use that location to get 1st street using Left(AllStreetsField,len-1) and put remainder into another working field using mid(AllStreetsField,len+1,x) where x=field length - len + 1.  then do again against remainder.

[LukeAllen1]

Thanks Mike, I'll play around and see if I can come up with something

The reason I'm doing this is because I work for a water company in Florida, so its to compliment a pdf mapbook I'm making in case we have no internet during a hurricane (I don't just randomly look up 7 year old posts I promise )

[DaleHoneycutt]

I'm coming in late to this conversation -- there's a well-received blog all about this:

More adventures in overlay: creating a street intersection list | ArcGIS Blog

[SubodhDhakal]

I really like how all have come up with ideas, why cant ESRI just make a tool to do that. I in my workplace use ET Geowizard tool-->Export Nodes (Regular nodes which carrys UID from centreline) that does in one tool and does not have to worry about it. May be its esri's time to incorporate it in to their new version..

Subodh

[JasonMurray]

Hi There, 

Within the ArcToolBox, Selected Analysis Tools - Overlay - Intersect. Fill out the details in the pop up window and change the output feature type to Point and it will create a point feature from all the places where the two road types intersect. That is the method I use anyway.