Removing overlapping lines from two line features

Question

I have a street network and another layer with a network of pipes, both as lines features. Some of the pipes overlap the street network.

I only want those pipes that follow along the streets. Means those which are equal to the streets or in other words remove all pipes which overlap the street network.

How can I do this with QGIS?

Answer 1

Assuming that the vectors in the "street network" and "pipe network" vectors are not exactly overlapping, even when they describe the same street/pipe, I would suggest to:

1. Create a small Buffer around the "street network" vector (say a couple of meters, depending how close the pipe and street vectors are).
2. Clip the "pipe network" with the newly created buffer.
3. Remove possible dangling pipes, deriving from pipes orthogonal to the buffered streets.