What era?

RE: O scale broken pavement lines

This would be today, with a range going back 10-15 years. 

There’s also selective compression

There’s also selective compression. In other words, if you want to make the layout seem larger, you will make the lines shorter than normal and reduce the spacing between them.

Today’s spacing on a main high speed road is 10 foot line and then 30 feet of empty space, then another 10 foot line. But in my opinion that will look awful on a model roadway. You can find other examples of slower traffic roads with 3 foot lines and 9 foot between them, that’s getting even better. I’d deliberately reduce the spacing between the lines to 5 feet. So for a model, do 3 foot long line, space over 5 feet then do another 3 foot line, 5 feet of space and so on. In my opinion, that will look quite believable and make the layout seem a bit larger.

MY RECOMMENDATION

Here's my recommended selectively compressed lines vs the prototype for main highways of 55 MPH or faster (freeways). The 10 foot lines with 30 foot spacing looks just awful. My selectively compressed 3 foot lines with 5 foot spacing looks great. Sometimes, what looks right on the model is better than totally to scale.

RE: compression looks good

Never thought of the compression. I thought I might be asking a stupid question, by not being able to find an engineering schematic, but I would have started a street and found out it looked awful.

Thanks!

Why compressed look good

They all look solid ... at 140!

Any excuse for a rip.  Even a jar of model paint, and groceries.

PS, That's not that fast up here in Canada!

Check with your state DOT

After chatting with my cousin, a New Jersey road engineer, he tells me that most stated will have the requirements on their DOT site. It sometimes takes a bit of digging around in the site, but it is usually there. This will give you a good start for where you are or where you are modeling.

I googled over to

I Googled over to my local multi-lane roadway and using the measure distance tool, found in the pop up right click menu, measured what Joe said, 10' stripe, 30' space.  I thought it would change on lower speed roads but I measured the same on roads with 55, 45 and 25mph speed limits.

The stripes got a little pixelated zoomed in that far but measured what Joe said +/- .75ft or so.  To reduce some error, I measured 3 stripe, space combos and always got 120 ft +/- .5ft  3*(10+30)=120  

Does anyone have a photo of what the model with compressed stripes looks like from a scale driver position?

edit: I also measured I-90 out in front of my great grandfather's homestead where the speed limit is 75 and got 150ft for a 3 stripe space combo.  Three changes from previous roads, different state, 20mph higher speed limit and Interstate vs state and city roads.  The stripes are about 20ft long which looks about right when compared to the length of the cars on the Interstate.

229 miles farther east in Montana, near a place called Racetrack, the speed limit is 80mph, the stripes are back to the 10 and 30ft.

Here is some of what came off

Here is some of what came off the Texas DOT site from the 2006 edition of theTexas MUTCD manual Highway Markings Part 3 (a 96 downloadable document): 

Followed a few pages later by:

Markings depend on what the lane width, number of lanes, traffic load, type of road, and apparently, according to the immediately above, roadway width.

CRZ

One Of The Things

I enjoy about this hobby is not just the trains (mostly so), but the opportunities to learn about the world. Seeing the world with new eyes every time I find something out. Makes it more interesting. 

This is why it's such a great hobby!

Good point. Just walk down a rural road sometime (being careful for traffic) and you'll see how large everything is when you passing over it at about 3-5 MPH.

And then realize a highway is much larger.

Excellent point. I know so many non-train-related thing because of model railroading that I never would have known otherwise. I love learning new stuff, and when you do model railroading right, you realize how much 'stuff' makes up the real world, much of it, you never thought of before you wanted a model of it.

Something doesn't feel right

So I used a conversion calculator for O scale and I used 1/48. 

https://www.modelbuildings.org/scale-conversion-calculator/

So is 3 feet supposed to = 3/4 inch and 5 feet supposed to = 1 1/4 inches ?

@ Nelson, Yes

O Scale is 1/4" to the foot. 1/48 x 12 = 1/4.

MUTCD History

Links to Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices from 1930's through 2000's. - Signing and striping standards.

https://ceprofs.civil.tamu.edu/ghawkins/MUTCD-History.htm