An ArcGIS user is creating a road polygon feature at a specified distance on each side of a road centerline. Which geoprocessing tool should be used?

In this scenario, the task involves creating a polygon feature that represents an area around a road centerline. The most appropriate geoprocessing tool for this operation is the Buffer tool. The Buffer tool generates a polygon that represents a specified distance around a feature, which in this case is the road centerline. By defining the desired distance, the Buffer tool creates polygons on both sides of the centerline, effectively producing the intended road width area.

Using the Buffer tool streamlines the process of establishing these boundary polygons. It is specifically designed to handle such tasks of spatial extent surrounding linear and point features, making it particularly suitable for road or pathway applications in GIS environments. This tool allows for the adjustment of buffer distances, which can be customized as per the user's needs.

Other tools may serve different functions: while the Intersect tool is used to find areas where two layers overlap, the Feature to Polygon tool converts point or line features into polygons without considering distance, and the Clip tool is designed to extract features using another dataset as a boundary. These tools do not directly fulfill the requirement for creating a specified distance polygon around a road, affirming the Buffer tool as the most fitting choice for this specific geospatial task.