To which point does it calculate drive time on a line?

[Jeafly]

Hi all, 

I am trying to figure out to which point Alteryx calculates drive time on a line? Thus, it's calculation from a point to a line, but which spot on the line. 
I have exhausted all options in my head and I can't figure out why it choses the drive distance it does. Also, couldn't find this info online. Does anyone have a good idea?

Thank you in advance!

[PanPP]

Hi @Jeafly 

Please take a look at the following article: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Identify-Coordinates-and-Calculate-Dri...

You can get the drivetime (and the straight line) in the distance tool, This drive time is based on the Tom Tom dataset.

Hope this helps, if it does please like this post. If you have any other questions, please let us know.

[Jeafly]

Hi @PanPP, 

I am using the TomTom Data and distance tool to get the drivetime data. The question is about the data I get back. Which point on the line (that I am calculating the distance to) is chosen? The article doesn't seem to answer that, but thank you.

[PanPP · Accepted solution]

Based on your selection in the workflow, you will get the distance to the destination centroid.

You can create points based on what distance you are trying to calculate, and then choose that as your destination centroid.

Hope this helps.

[Jeafly]

Thank you for clarifying that. How I missed that one, I don't understand. 

Do you by any chance know if there is a way to have it return the shortest drive distance from the line input without splitting it into points? It is a fairly big dataset.

[PanPP]

In the distance tool, under output distance, I believe you can select create the nearest interior point inside a polygon (would generate a point on the map).

You can also use Find Nearest tool to identify the shortest distance between spatial objects in one file and the objects in a second file. 

Hope this answers your question. 

[Jeafly]

Thank you. 

As far as I know, calculating the Interior Point is based on the nearest point as the crow flies and not the nearest by drive distance. 

Using the find nearest tool, would work, but is extremely heavy due to the size of the data sets used. 

I'll have to think of a good alternative. 

Thanks again for your help.