Prefer Straight Routes for wayfinding?

Question

Is there a way to prefer straight roads in network analyst rather than going through zigzag routes (i.e creating straight forward routing instead of really going through the shortest path)?

I am creating a wayfinding map and want to keep directions straight.

In this example, I want to go from point 1 to point 2 but I don't want to route through the diagonal road(cross). I am not allowed to manipulate time on the network and I cannot block the diagonal road. I prefer to use the other road (with more vertices and longer) is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

The way that I would try to answer your original question is to add a field to your roads and update it with a count of vertices.

1. Add a Long Integer field
2. Calculate that field using the Python parser to be equal to !shape.pointcount!,

You can then use the vertex count field as, or to contribute to, your impedance field.

You'll need to think about whether an almost straight road with lots of vertices should be treated as "straight" for your purposes, and maybe also about how you will deal with roads that consist of many lines.

@user30184 has offered some very useful advice as a comment that I will append here:

Probably it would be best to clean the roads from unnecessary dense vertices by simplifying. Alternatively you can think about other measures like a ratio of mathematical distance from the start node to end node vs. the length along the road or something like that.