Dashed Line Symbology not joining correctly

Question

Hello! I am trying to use a dashed line to symbolize bike lanes, with data for the bike lanes coming from a hosted feature layer. When the lines are drawn in Map Viewer, however, the dash patterns are very inconsistent:

I expected the lines to be joined together, but instead they seem to be drawn per-segment. This can also lead to the dashes disappearing completely at different zoom levels (all lines in this image are symbolized identically):

I've found that dissolving the lines into a single feature can solve this in Pro, but that's not a viable solution for the ArcGIS Online map - the data is coming directly from a hosted feature layer that is updated frequently.

Is this an issue anyone else has encountered? Any recommendations on getting the dashes to draw consistently/evenly?

EMagnuson · Answer

I've been encountering this issue for years and it's maddening. It happens with all sorts of overlapping dashed lines, not just this layer. I have yet to find a solution that solves this problem in all instances, but I'd suggest trying this half-solution from Esri: https://support.esri.com/en-us/knowledge-base/problem-overlapping-dashed-polygon-boundaries-with-shar-000023970

RussRoberts · Answer

Not that I can think of tricky part would be number of dashes we use per map scale and width and knowing how the end of a row of features exists and when its just the end of a small feature which in the case above would behave better as a segment of the line.

JimHodgson · Answer

Thanks for the reply! I tried adding the feature layer directly to the map, and unfortunately there's still the same issue:

I suspect that, as you note,  the problem is coming from the fact that most of the features are quite small. Is there any way to connect the features based on their symbology fields? A kind of pseudo-dissolve that could be used to draw the dashes continuously across adjacent features in the same symbology class?

The ideal scenario would be to maintain our small-ish sections of road (which have different attributes for each half-block) as separate features, but have them draw as one continuous stretch of painted lane.

Thanks for your time!