I'm hoping this is just a transitional state soon to be replaced by something that makes more sense, but one of the roads on my commute was recently resurfaced and when they re-painted the lane markers they transformed what was already one of the most challenging spots in my commute into an absolute death trap.
The situation: I'm heading east on SW Baseline Road in Aloha. Just after SW Baseline passes SW 185th, the right lane veers off to loop around and let people head north on 185th. Where it does this, there's a little traffic island where people coming the other way around this bend merge onto Baseline. It used to be that the next-to-rightmost lane also had the option of veering right, or cars there could go straight and pass the island. This was ridiculous, of course, but I could generally work around it by staying in the bike lane until I got to a bit of sidewalk that provided a safe way to get across this absurd traffic island.
A picture might help (borrowed from Google maps).
So, as I said, when they re-surfaced the roads, they changed the lane striping. Now only one lane has the option of swinging off to the right,
BUT the bike lane abruptly moves from the right side of the turning lane to the left side of the turning lane
AS cars are making the transition to turn right, including people from the middle lane who realized at the last minute that they need to turn or people turning left from southbound 185th and cutting across all eastbound lanes on Baseline.
Here's what it looks like now.
Here's another shot for additional perspective.
To really understand what I'm freaked out about, compare the location of the yellow car in the first picture to where it is in the second picture to get an idea of how long it takes for a bus to occupy the space a bike needs to get across to the new bike lane location. The speed limit here is 45 mph, but the bus was probably going a little faster trying to beat the light (notice it's red in the second picture).
This is a bit hazardous in full daylight, but with daylight savings time about to end and the non-stop rainy season upon us, this spot is going to be awful.
What would you do in this situation?