City Proposes That All Horse Carriage Pickups Happen Inside Central Park

It’s a quintessential New York City sight: the horse carriages queued up on Central Park South. But it may not be there for long.

The city wants to move pickups to five designated boarding areas inside the park. The pickup sites would be near entrances on Fifth Avenue and Central Park West. 

The Department of Transportation submitted new draft rules today. 

Officials say the goal is to promote the health and safety of the horses by limiting the amount of time they spend alongside traffic. They say the plan provides the same amount of space for boarding as currently exists. 

But animal rights advocates have argued for years that the horse carriages are inhumane and should be banned altogether. In recent weeks, advocates have also called on the city to do more to protect the horses from scorching temperatures.

"Forcing horses out among traffic - on hot pavement - with cars and buses speeding by never made sense, and there’s no reason the most progressive city in the world should tolerate it for a single day longer," Steve Nislick and Wendy Neu of NYCLASS, an animal rights organization, said in a statement. "Moving the hack line will also help ease congestion along Central Park South and surrounding streets, as well as making it safer for pedestrians, bikers, and horses who are too often placed in danger due to oncoming traffic."

Carriage drivers, on the other hand, are not so happy with the Mayor's proposal. Christina Hansen, a carriage driver and spokeswoman for the horse carriage industry said they were blindsided by the news and that no one from City Hall had reached out to them beforehand for input. She called the proposal an unnecessary change to a century-old city tradition.

Mayor Bill de Blasio once said he'd ban horse carriages on his first day in office, and he tried to do so in his first term. The City Council also introduced legislation on the subject, but carriage drivers and many New Yorkers opposed the ban, and the effort fizzled.

The Department of Transportation is accepting comments on the new rules, and will hold a hearing on the subject on Oct. 3.