Setting geographic locations after importing from Synchro

Questions and discussions about operating Tru-Traffic

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Setting geographic locations after importing from Synchro

Postby bullock » Tue Jun 04, 2019 8:32 pm

Several users have asked about importing a Synchro Model into Tru-Traffic and then setting the geographic locations of the intersections to perform Travel Time & Delay studies. In particular they wonder about the special case where they don't yet have the geographic coordinates, not in a Google Earth KML file, not in an Excel spreadsheet, nor any other file format or database.

Assuming you've already exported the Synchro Model to a UTDF (*.csv) file, then the short answer is to
  1. (in Tru-Traffic) use the File: Open command or toolbar button, and change the File Type to UTDF 2006, to import that UTDF file,
  2. use Google Earth to drop Placemarks at each of the intersections, labeling them with their Intersection ID Number as specified in Synchro, then
  3. copy the folder from Google Earth with all the Placemarks and paste it into Tru-Traffic's Network View or Outline View.

But for step b., there are some intermediate steps that can save you some time and effort here. You can use Tru-Traffic to prepare a folder for Google Earth with Placemarks for all the intersections at preliminary geographic locations. Then in Google Earth, you just drag the Placemarks to their correct locations -- usually a few hundred feet away -- and you're ready to perform step c. above. (While this list shows quite a few steps, it saves you many other sub-steps that you'll have to perform if you decide to skip this list.)

To do this, after importing the UTDF file into Tru-Traffic (step a.),

  1. Open Google Earth and zoom to an intersection in you network, preferably one near the center. Zoom in enough that you can clearly see the lane divisions.
  2. Drop a Placemark at the center of the intersection. You can leave this Placemark untitled.
  3. Select that Placemark under Places in the left panel and copy it to the clipboard.
  4. In Tru-Traffic, open the Intersection Parameters for the intersection where you dropped the Placemark.
  5. Click the Coordinates... button under the Name, etc. tab to open the Intersection Geographic Coordinates dialog, then paste the Placemark.
    Image
  6. Click OK twice to accept the assignment of this Placemark to this intersection. The first OK doesn't really have any effect other than to close that dialog, as it responds to Tru-Traffic's offer to reset the distances with the pasted geographic coordinates, but since there's only one point pasted, it won't be able to calculate any distances anyway.
  7. In the left panel of the Intersection Geographic Coordinates dialog, click the Extrapolate Coordinates icon.
  8. Click OK to acknowledge the warning that this will set coordinates for the other intersections.
  9. Click OK twice to close both the Intersection Geographic Coordinates dialog and the Intersection Parameters dialog. If Tru-Traffic offers to reset travel distances along any of the links, click No for now, as these preliminary, extrapolated coordinates (extrapolated using the layout from Synchro) rarely have sufficient accuracy for travel distance measurements.
  10. Use Edit: Copy: Geographic Coordinates: Geographic Coordinates as Google KML to copy the preliminary, extrapolate coordinates to the clipboard in Google KML Folder format.
  11. In Google Earth, select Places in the left panel and Paste the coordinates copied from Tru-Traffic.
  12. Now you can zoom to each intersection and drag the corresponding Placemark to the correct location. You have to first select the Placemark and open its Properties in order to drag it.
  13. As it's usually optimal to have two Placemarks for each intersection (to give Tru-Traffic a sense of the intersection extent), first drag the Placemark to one corner of the intersection (e.g. on the sidewalk corner). Copy the Placemark then drag it again, to the diagonally opposite corner. Then paste in order to restore the duplicate of the Placemark at the first corner. Ideally, you'll have two Placemarks straddling the center so that their midpoint is at the center of the intersection and their separation indicates the intersection extent.
  14. After correcting all the locations, you're ready to perform step c. above.
bullock
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