If you have ever walked past Central Park South, you know the smell before you see the horses. For more than 150 years, horse-drawn carriages have been one of those things tourists love and most New Yorkers quietly avoid. Now the city is about to end them. On Oct. 13, City Council Speaker Julie Menin and Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a deal to ban horse-drawn carriages in New York City. The Council is scheduled to vote on Oct. 22.
If it passes, the city would stop issuing carriage licenses and phase the industry out completely by June 1, 2028. The horses could not be sold to slaughterhouses or handed off to other carriage companies. The bill also creates a workforce transition program for drivers, including job placement, training, career counseling, and financial compensation. The mayor said his administration would make sure workers and owners are protected and the horses are safe.
People have been trying to do this for over a decade. Bill de Blasio promised a ban when he ran in 2013 and left office without one. Eric Adams called for a ban in 2025 and also did not get it done. What changed was this summer. In June, a carriage horse collapsed and died. Weeks later, 18-year-old tourist Romanch Mahajan died after falling from a runaway carriage in the park. The Council renamed the bill after him. The Central Park Conservancy, which manages the park, had already come out in support of a ban last year.
The carriage drivers are unionized under the Transport Workers Union, and the union has fought hard for the industry. Its president, John Samuelsen, said the bill offers families no real economic relief and is full of promises without guarantees. Some drivers have spent decades doing this work. One driver told ABC7 he has been giving rides in Central Park for nearly 25 years. Animal rights group NYCLASS, which has protested in the park for years, called it a “long-fought win” and wants the horses retired to sanctuaries.
Here’s the thing about tradition: being old is not the same as being good. New York tears things down and builds them over again every single day. We don’t keep things because they’ve always been here. We keep them because they still work. Horse carriages don’t work in modern New York. Not on streets shared with yellow cabs, delivery trucks, e-bikes, and a park that sees around 40 million visitors a year. A horse was not built for Midtown traffic, and Midtown traffic is not slowing down for a horse. Pretending otherwise has already cost a teenager his life.
That doesn’t make the drivers the villains. If the city is ending this industry, it owes the people in it more than a press release. The transition program needs to be real, funded, and guaranteed, not a list of “supposals,” as the union put it. But when a tradition stops fitting the city, the answer isn’t to freeze the city. It’s to build around it, and move forward. On Oct. 22, the Council will decide whether Central Park belongs to the city New York is now or the postcard it used to be. My vote is for the city.
Update: As of Oct. 22, New York City legislators have approved the ban on Central Park’s horse-drawn carriages.