When the City Council votes Thursday on a bill to ban Central Park\u2019s horse carriages, the decision could reverberate far beyond the industry\u2019s workers and the fanatics who have lobbied to abolish their trade.<\/p>\n
If the vote succeeds<\/a>, it will demonstrate that New York\u2019s turn toward the radical left goes far beyond Mayor Zohran Mamdani \u2014 and that Julie Menin, the supposedly more moderate council speaker, isn\u2019t checking Mamdani\u2019s extremism but enabling it.\u00a0<\/p>\n It will also show that this council is uninterested in facts or data.<\/p>\n The ban is ostensibly spurred by public peril:\u00a0The council\u2019s July hearing on the issue came just a month after a horse-carriage crash killed passenger Romanch Mahajan<\/a>, an 18-year-old tourist from India. \u00a0<\/p>\n Mahajan\u2019s death was awful \u2014 but it\u2019s the only known instance of a human fatality in Central Park carriage history. \u00a0<\/p>\n The best theory of why the horse bolted is that it was shocked by stray underground\u00a0voltage \u2014 a dangerous condition that the city and the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit that manages the park, should have warned drivers about. \u00a0<\/p>\n Yes, the conservancy, which supports the ban, will yammer on about eight \u201cincidents\u201d over 13 months, including \u201ccollisions\u201d and \u201cinjured drivers.\u201d<\/p>\n But it presents these numbers in a vacuum. \u00a0<\/p>\n If you tried to tally every comparable Central Park \u201cincident\u201d of\u00a0a collision between cyclists, or of a pedicab operator driving illegally on pedestrian paths, you\u2019d come up with thousands of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n One of the conservancy\u2019s reported \u201cincidents\u201d was of a horse that died this year<\/a> \u2014 after eating poisonous shrubs planted by the park.<\/p>\n If we\u2019re going to play this game, remember that a conservancy motor vehicle hit and killed Barry, the beloved barred owl<\/a>, five years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n Further, the council is ignoring facts and data on the horses themselves.<\/p>\n The animals, benefiting from roomy stables, mandated vet checkups and vacations, are treated well.<\/p>\n Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg couldn\u2019t secure an animal-cruelty conviction last year of one driver whose horse died on the street\u00a0\u2014 because a\u00a0jury accepted<\/a> that his\u00a0horse had suffered from a stealthy cancer.\u00a0<\/p>\n If the council were following park safety data, it would focus on bikes and crime.<\/p>\n Since Mahajan\u2019s death, three other people have died violently in Central Park \u2014 two in bike crashes, and one, homeless artist Lee Rogers, beaten to death<\/a>.<\/p>\n Rogers was particularly vulnerable because the city isn\u2019t enforcing rules against camping in the park overnight.\u00a0<\/p>\n Get rid of\u00a0carriages, and we\u2019ll likely see even more bike crashes: The horses set a slow pace, so\u00a0removing them will allow pedicab drivers and e-bikers to go faster than ever. \u00a0<\/p>\n In ignoring facts, the council would abolish a thriving small business.<\/p>\n About 200 people work in an industry that brings in millions of tourist dollars each year with no public subsidy. \u00a0<\/p>\n The council\u2019s fix for putting families on the unemployment rolls involves directing the mayor to create a \u201cworkforce transition program,\u201d helping them drive a pedicab or a bus. \u00a0<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t\u00a0occur to Menin and the council that people choose jobs they enjoy \u2014 carriage drivers like horses! \u2014 and aren\u2019t widgets to be swapped from one role to another via central planning. \u00a0<\/p>\n Relatedly, the ban would extinguish the value of private assets.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n The medallions that the city issued decades ago for the right to operate horse carriages have since traded for six figures on the open market. \u00a0<\/p>\n Horses and carriages have value, too \u2014 but the bill would prohibit owners from selling horses to a buyer operating carriages in another city.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a grab reminiscent of Mamdani\u2019s rent freeze<\/a>, which diminishes private property values for the supposed collective good. \u00a0<\/p>\n Banning horses goes even further, extinguishing the value of regulated but private property. \u00a0<\/p>\n