topic Re: Dashed Line Symbology not joining correctly in ArcGIS Online Questions

Dashed Line Symbology not joining correctly

JimHodgson — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 18:10:00 GMT

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?

Re: Dashed Line Symbology not joining correctly

RussRoberts — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 19:31:03 GMT

Can you share the map/layer and I can take a look into this? You can toss it into a group and invite russell_jsapi into it.

Re: Dashed Line Symbology not joining correctly

JimHodgson — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 21:39:21 GMT

Hey! The data is public, it can be found here: Bikeways | VanMap.

If you symbolize it as "Location (Single Symbol)" and set the pattern to dashed you should see the issue described in the post.

Thanks for looking into this!

Re: Dashed Line Symbology not joining correctly

RussRoberts — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 14:17:00 GMT

This is a map image layer and the server is exporting the image which is displayed in the map. Here is the raw export where you can see the similar drawing you mention above. Also the bikeways look to be multiple tiny features

I would recommend if you can use the layer at the MapServer/0 URL which will use it as a feature layer and not rely on the export image for drawing and using the vector symbols under Dashed you will get a closer to expected result but still some of the dashes are longer than some of the individual features that are in the map.

Re: Dashed Line Symbology not joining correctly

JimHodgson — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 19:28:42 GMT

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!

Re: Dashed Line Symbology not joining correctly

RussRoberts — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 20:33:13 GMT

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.

Re: Dashed Line Symbology not joining correctly

EMagnuson — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 17:12:15 GMT

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