eating a poisonous plant.<\/a><\/p>\nIn August 2022, Ryder collapsed in Hell’s Kitchen and later died.<\/p>\n
“I introduced this bill two months ago, and I made this version particularly to include a workforce development concept into this bill,” Marte said.<\/p>\n
“This is the part that, you know, the city council seems to not be understanding that these are small businesses. I mean, people that have worked for decades in some cases to save up and buy a medallion,” Christina Hansen with TWU Local 100 said.<\/p>\n
Just like TLC drivers, carriage horse owners buy, sell or inherit their medallions, which have been capped at 68 since the end of WWII.<\/p>\n
The bill would stop renewing the 2 year licenses for the park’s 68 carriages.<\/p>\n
“We were told there wasn’t room then. But since then, we’ve added hundreds of pedi-cabs, thousands of e-bikes, and, you know, there’s still the same 68 carriages. And now they’re trying to tell us that there isn’t room for us anymore,” Hansen said.<\/p>\n
The current City Council bill to ban horse-drawn carriages was introduced on June 11, on the same day a counter bill was introduced to conduct a study and reform the industry.<\/p>\n
The debate is passionate on both sides.<\/p>\n
The Central Park Conservancy will be among those testifying, suggesting the city consider adding the drivers to its workforce.<\/p>\n
“I have to believe that somewhere in that vast network of jobs, there are 200 openings that would match the skills of these drivers and would provide them great benefits, you know, pension, health care, time off, all the things that they do not have right now as independent operators,” VP of Central Park Conservancy David Saltonstall said.<\/p>\n
“People choose to work with horses because we love horses, not because you want to go stacked boxes in an Amazon warehouse,” Hansen said.<\/p>\n
“I don’t question their love for, for their for their horses. I do question the safetiness,” Marte said.<\/p>\n
“We support the spirit of the bill. We are, however, critical of the insufficiencies of the worker protections and we look forward to working with the Council to address those concerns, as we move forward on an important issue for New Yorkers,” Mamdani said.<\/p>\n
The conservancy says it also agrees with the drivers concerns about speeding e-bikes, and says a safer, carriage-free park in the future should also have a 15 mile per hour speed limit that’s well enforced.<\/p>\n
Submit a tip or story idea to Eyewitness News<\/p>\n
Have a breaking news tip or an idea for a story we should cover? Send it to Eyewitness News using the form below. If attaching a video or photo, terms of use apply.<\/a><\/p>\nCopyright \u00a9 2026 WABC-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK CITY (WABC) — The debate over horse-drawn carriages in New York City is back in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[112878,9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-296282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-112878","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}