Hey experts, can you help me think through a moment on my commute home? I'm never sure what to do with myself.
I have to go down a one-lane road with a bike lane. As it approaches Big Cross Street, it expands into three lanes and the bike lane disappears: so you've got a right turn lane, straight ahead lane, and a combo left turn/straight ahead lane. After the intersection, there are two travel lanes on my side of the street, and no bike lane. I need to proceed across Big Cross Street and then make a left turn a block later.
Currently, I'm riding in the bike lane until it phases out into the right turn lane, then hopping onto the sidewalk via a handy cut in the curb for the 20 remaining feet until the intersection. I wait at the corner until it's safe, then proceed across the intersection in the cross walk. I know riding on the sidewalk is bad, but I get rattled taking the straight-ahead travel lane because there's usually a long line of cars, and I can't stay right next to the curb because then I'm interfering with people trying to make a right turn. Where do I go?
Once I'm across the intersection, I wait until the line of cars has passed, then get back out into the right travel lane until I need to make the left turn a block later. Sometimes this means I have to come to a complete stop, though, since I'm working with four lanes of traffic, and there's no bike lane so I'm just standing in the road. This makes me nervous since sometimes I have to wait a while, and there's no easy way to get my bike up and down from the sidewalk there without dismounting. There's plenty of room for cars to pass but standing in a traffic lane just doesn't seem like a smart move.
What do I do with myself? In theory I could make the left turn at the original Big Cross Street via the left turn lane, but that spits me onto a busy road with a line of parked commuter cars that are also trying to get out (so lots of opening doors, people trying to bolt out of parallel spots before the next wave of traffic hits, etc.). I would also have to deal with a second busy intersection, while going up to the intersection that I'm using now means I'm on my own very quiet residential street the whole rest of the way home.
Help! Everything else is going smoothly at this point (knock on wood).