The original goal of this project was to examine the existing public washroom infrastructure in the City of Vancouver using ArcPro’s network analyst tool. This tool can be used to analyze networks such as roads and pathways, to better determine true distance and approximate time of travel along sections of the network. The tool can also be used to find gaps in a network and suggest areas for potential services, in this case public washrooms. I was going to use Vancouver’s public road network and greenway network to conduct this analysis. This would have given the practical distance in between washrooms and potential areas for new ones. It would have also been able to suggest unsought of areas for more equitable public washroom distribution. I was then going to integrate major public transit lines into this network model to see if major transfer hubs that aren’t necessarily rapid transit stations would work in the network analyst model. Unfortunately, the network analyst tool requires comprehensive street signage data to function. It also suggests the use of comprehensive traffic data for better modeling. Neither of these were accessible within the scope of this project, thus the model did not work.

Upon reflection with the multiple attempts to create a network analysis model, it requires much more data than should be necessary to produce locations for public washrooms. It would have been better to use data on pedestrian and cyclist traffic in parks, as well as customer volume for commercial zones, to determine areas with the highest need for washrooms. While this was already discussed in the discussion section of the project, I think it is important to mention, as in retrospect, using the network analyst tool was well beyond the scope and need for this project. Although the network analysis tool did not provide the necessary function as intended, it did give insight into what is required for it’s use. In the future I would love to use this tool, and I believe it is one of the more comprehensive and powerful analysis methods ArcPro has to offer.