Finding shortest route for cyclist that can switch between road layer and cycle path anywhere they intersect?

Question

I have two data layers that I want to use in a network analysis for the shortest route analysis for a cyclist:

1. road network
2. cycle paths

I want to find a shortest route for a cyclist that can switch between road layer and cycle path anytime where they intersect.

Problem is that sometimes the cycle network lies on the top of the road network but does not align properly. I am not sure how to use the data in network analysis.

Should I merge these two data sets first and use the feature to line tool to create intersections of the street and cycle network, or is this a case of a multimodal network?

I work with Arc GIS 10.2

Answer 1

As commented by @ChrisW:

if there is anywhere a bike can go that a car can't, it's multi-modal network. If all bike routes/paths are on streets, then there's no need to have it multi-modal. Now you could simplify things a bit, editing your data such that your bike network is only paths that aren't on roads so you don't have to worry about overlapping features and getting things to align. You'd just need to snap your bike endpoints to the road and make sure the roads had matching vertices to allow for the multi-modal node connection.