Yield signs on Lakefront Trail

With the weather warming up in fits and starts, I’ve been using Divvy to get to and from work a lot these past few weeks. I use the Lakefront Trail for a good stretch of my bike commute, because it’s near my apartment and way nicer than trying to go south on Sheridan or Clark.

The north side of the trail has a lot of at-grade intersections with major east-west streets, where the trail essentially is marked as a crosswalk, and there are all-way stops from east-west traffic and traffic exiting LSD. (I’m talking about Montrose, Wilson, Lawrence, and Foster here, mainly.) Traffic from the trail, of course, has right-of-way at all these intersections. Except at Lawrence, there are some weird signs that I can’t quite puzzle out: Namely, trail users have the standard upside-down triangle “Yield” at this intersection.

Now, to reiterate, all vehicular traffic has stop signs at this intersection. The yield signs are past the normal Lawrence sidewalk, so it’s not to make trail traffic yield to other pedestrians. These signs are not present at the other intersections. So my questions are:
[ul]
[li]Who the heck does CDOT expect me to be yielding to?[/li][li]Am I actually legally required, as a cyclist, to yield to vehicular traffic here?[/li][li]If I’m struck by a car in this intersection, who will the police cite?[/li][/ul]

Street view of the relevant intersection.

That’d be my guess. 'Round here, it’s not unsusual for trails to have stop signs near busy intersections.

Here’s the example of trail stop signs that I had in mind.

A better question is, if you’re struck by a car, who will the coroner bury?

I understand and appreciate your curiosity about the confusing signage, but if it were me, I’d be less worried about my “rights” and more worried about getting my ass creamed by a vehicle with much, much more kinetic energy than I have.

Some of us raised this question when CDOT put those up, but they persisted, thinking (I guess) that it would make everyone more cautious. It certainly doesn’t comply with the Green Book.

Trail users do have the right of way.