“We are going to get rid of horse carriages, period. We are going to quickly and aggressively move to make horse carriages no longer a part of the landscape. . . They are not humane. They are not appropriate for the year 2014. So, just watch us do it.”
So spoke Bill de Blasio just before taking the reins of city government.
Horse-drawn carriages have been ferrying people around Central Park since at least 1858. In addition to providing jobs for carriage drivers and rides for tourists, they’ve given us memorable moments in films such as “Barefoot in the Park,” where a newly married Robert Redford and Jane Fonda take a ride before checking in to the Plaza.
Mayor de Blasio and others who want to outlaw the industry say it is cruel to animals. They say they intend to replace the horse carriages with antique-like electric cars. The drivers, for their part, reject the cars, saying they are “horse people.” They claim their horses are well cared for — and that there are few industries as heavily regulated as theirs.
“I can’t understand how someone can look at a fat shiny horse, strolling down the street minding its own business, and see animal cruelty,” Christina Hansen, a carriage driver and liaison for the Horse and Carriage Association of New York City, told FoxNews.com. “There are people who don’t know anything about horses.”
We can’t say how the animals are treated. We can say that if the mayor is going to put an iconic New York industry out of business on the grounds that its practices are inhumane, those who will lose their livelihoods as a result at least have the right to demand he first prove it.