{"id":373864,"date":"2026-10-15T13:16:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T13:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/373864\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T13:16:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T13:16:14","slug":"news-12-bronx-new-york-to-ban-central-parks-horse-drawn-carriages-after-teens-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/373864\/","title":{"rendered":"News 12 | Bronx | New York To Ban Central Parks Horse Drawn Carriages After Teens Death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin have announced a deal to phase out and ban New York&#8217;s iconic horse-drawn carriages by June 1, 2028.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">&#8220;We were pretty blindsided,&#8221; said Jill Adamski, a carriage driver from Midwood, Brooklyn. &#8220;I still don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s going to happen. I don&#8217;t plan on stopping fighting this.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Adamski says that while she used to have an office job, she left it so she could drive a carriage and be around horses more.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">&#8220;I&#8217;m kind of under the assumption I&#8217;ll be living off savings for a while,&#8221; she said of what will happen if the bill passes.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">The carriage rides have been part of Central Park <a data-rich-text-hyperlink=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.centralparkhorsecarriage.com\/s\/stories\/complete-history-of-central-park-horse-carriage-rides-in-nyc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">since it first opened to the public more than 165 years ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">However, especially over the last two decades, the industry has been saddled with pressure from animal rights advocates, like <a data-rich-text-hyperlink=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/nyclass.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New Yorkers for Clean, Livable, and Safe Streets<\/a> (NYCLASS).<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Edita Birnkrant, executive director of NYCLASS, cited, &#8220;the mistreatment, the neglect,&#8221; of the horses.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">&#8220;We have sick horses that work to the point of collapse or death,&#8221; Birnkrant says.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">But Adamski says that point of view is simply due to a lack of information, and that the industry is &#8220;so highly regulated, there&#8217;s absolutely nothing close to abuse going on.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">However, an 18-year-old tourist died in June while trying to save his mother, who had been thrown from an out-of-control carriage that ran off.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">&#8220;This is ending, whether they like it or not. We can&#8217;t have any more tragedies,&#8221; Birnkrant said.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">According to both Mamdani and Menin, the bill includes resources to help the approximately 150 carriage drivers in the city transition to something new.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">In a statement, the president of the union representing them said the &#8220;bill has no meaningful economic relief for workers.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Adamski added that &#8220;there&#8217;s still nothing of substance. It&#8217;s basically talking about job fairs.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Birnkrant says it offers more than that, though, claiming city leaders are &#8220;saying they&#8217;re even giving (drivers) the ability for scholarships, trade schools. (The drivers) know all this. This is just sort of PR.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">At a news conference Wednesday, MTA chair and CEO Jannie Lieber also said drivers could be a fit for openings with his association, noting that &#8220;they&#8217;re already in the transportation business, they&#8217;re already dealing with customers.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Adamski said she would not be pursuing that.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">&#8220;I don&#8217;t plan on going back to anything that&#8217;s not with horses,&#8221; she says.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Speaker Menin says the Council will vote on the bill Oct. 22, and she expects it to have enough support to pass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin have announced a deal to phase&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-373864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373864","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=373864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}