A push to banish horse-drawn carriages from New York City gained a prominent ally on Wednesday when Mayor Eric Adams publicly urged the City Council to pass a bill that would eliminate the distinctive vehicles from Central Park by next year.
The carriages, popular with tourists and a feature of the park’s rolling landscape since the 19th century, have long been politically contentious. Some people view the carriages as vestiges of old-world charm. Other see them as a form of animal cruelty.
Mr. Adams, in announcing his support for the pending bill, Ryder’s Law, cited what he said were several episodes in recent years that had “raised concerns about the welfare of the horses, as well as the safety of pedestrians, cyclists, drivers and carriage operators.”
The episodes the mayor noted included the 2022 death of the carriage horse for whom Ryder’s Law is named; the August death of a carriage horse named Lady; and an incident last month in which a carriage horse named Bambi ran off with no driver at the reins, causing three passengers to jump out for their safety’s sake.
“While horse-drawn carriages have long been an iconic fixture of Central Park,” Mr. Adams said in a statement, “they are increasingly incompatible with the conditions of a modern, heavily used urban green space.”
The mayor’s embrace of a carriage ban came a little more than a month after the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit group that oversees the park, issued a similar call, the first time the organization had taken a public stance on the matter.
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The post Mayor Adams Joins Growing Call to Ban Carriage Horses in New York City appeared first on New York Times.
