Tolerence for high traffic volumes

[PamNY]

Procedural question:

on a multi-lane highway, there's likely to be a considerable distance between the traffic lane and the crosswalk. When you do choose to walk the intersection, how do you get from one to the other - and how do you re-join traffic once you've reached the other side? It just seems dangerous, to me - particularly (presumably) re-joining traffic from a wheelchair cut facing perpendicular to traffic.

I've only done it in the city, where there's sidewalk. I move to the right just before the intersection. To rejoin traffic, I walk the bike into the street and wait till it's clear. I'm usually crossing a multi-lane road on a smaller street, not rejoining a multi-lane road.

I do it only in really odd situations -- in one case, the bike lane (on the right) just goes away and a lot of cars are turning right. I have no idea what bikes are legally supposed to do. I guess taking the lane would be legal, but New York drivers are not expecting that.

What most cyclists do -- and it's probably illegal -- is go into the crosswalk before the light changes (a time-honored New York custom) to get ahead of the cars, but this particular intersection has heavy pedestrian traffic.