The law definitely requires you to come to a complete stop at a red light before making a right turn. I've seen the camera at that intersection go off many times when people don't do that. It's a load of crap, especially when there's clearly no one coming, but that grey area is how police departments have always made their money.

Does anyone have any advice for those of us who work at nights in Manhattan? Seems like all the transportation (buses, ferries) all stop service early. If I get out of work around midnight, it looks like my only option is to drive in and out.

The first the Port Authority can do to help combat this problem is install the correct type of bike rack for us to use. The racks currently in use are the kind where you have to chain your bike by it's tire, rather than being able to chain the bike frame directly to the rack itself. It's a bike thief's dream out there. Most of the time you can walk away with someone's bike just by taking off the tire.

It seems that what most people who want more gun laws are really hoping for is for guns to somehow not exist anymore. To them, it's as if these gun laws will somehow magically get rid of all the guns in existence, and to an extent, it will... but only for law abiding citizens. Every time someone gets shot there is a knee-jerk reaction for more gun laws by people who ignore the fact that the vast majority of gun violence in this country is carried out using weapons obtained illegally anyway. Most criminals do not get a license, walk into a Walmart and buy a gun, register that gun, and then murder people with that gun. The shooter in Colorado was an exception to this, and clearly nuts. While laws making guns illegal for everyone might have prevented him from obtaining guns legally, it would not have prevented him from getting guns some other way, and it definitely would not have prevented him from going on a killing spree using a different weapon, like a knife. Ownership of a gun does not make someone more likely to commit an act of violence any more than owning a fancy steak knife set makes me more likely to stab my obnoxiously loud neighbors.

In an ideal world, guns would not exist. I'm totally for this. But as long as they do, people NEED to understand their right to own a gun is a GOOD thing. It's the reason the 2nd amendment was created to begin with, by people who escaped tyrannical governments. An army with guns against an unarmed populace can do whatever it wants, and this is how many fascist governments were born. Not to mention that the reason criminals are so brazen when it comes to committing crimes is that they don't think the guy on the other end is going to shoot them back.

Does anyone know what's going on with the repaving of Newark Ave. between Coles St. and Summit Ave.? I googled around and apparently this was Phase III of the Newark Avenue Streetscaping project and was supposed to be finished by now. The sidewalks, streetlights, benches, etc. were all finished around the end of summer last year but it seems the project has stalled. I can't seem to find any answers on the internet about this.