As Horse Carriage Ban Gains Allies, Lawmakers Promise New Jobs With Few Specifics

As pressure mounts to end the city’s horse-drawn carriage rides once and for all, lawmakers are working to develop a jobs plan for the industry’s drivers — but the proposal on the table to retire the iconic tourist trade is light on specifics.

That proposal was at the heart of hours of testimony at the City Council on Wednesday, as lawmakers heard from the father of a teenage tourist flung to his death from a horse-drawn carriage last month. Testifying remotely from India, Deepak Mahajan pleaded with Council members to ensure his son is the “last victim” of an industry that has been a symbol of Central Park since the 1850s.

He said his 18-year-old son, Romanch, could still be alive if the Council had acted last year on a previous legislative proposal to remove carriages from the park. 

“We are asking you plainly: Act now,” Mahajan said while his wife, Priya, held a photo of their oldest son. “A version of this law sat before this Council last year, and if it had passed the carriages would have stopped on June 1, 2026.”

“Romanch died on June 17.”

The hearing on the proposal, now renamed “Romanch’s Law,” drew an overflow crowd to both levels of the Council chamber at City Hall.

The teen’s aunt, Sovia Thurkal, broke down in tears in front of the Council as she detailed a June 17 phone call with her brother, “expecting to hear that they were having a wonderful day.”

Instead, she said she heard Mahajan begging for people on the scene to save his son.

“Those screams, those cries, those sounds of agony and desperate sounds have not left me and I am sure they will never leave me,” she said.

The latest push to rid the park of 68 horse-drawn carriages and more than 200 licensed horse-carriage drivers gained momentum this week when Council Speaker Julie Menin came out in favor of the proposal to wind down the industry within two years and find new jobs for affected workers. Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents many of the drivers, fiercely opposes the ban.

The bill’s sponsor, Councilmember Christopher Marte (D-Manhattan), said the carnage extends far beyond Romanch’s death.

“Every time an incident occurs, we are given an excuse, we are told this is just an isolated incident and that the industry is completely safe,” he testified. “But the reality is that in the past 34 years, there have been 128 documented horse carriage accidents, 30 horses have died, dozens of horses and people have been injured and hospitalized.”

The support from Menin and Majority Leader Shaun Abreu came after the Central Park Conservancy, which oversees the 843-acre park, last August pushed for a ban for the first time. Such a move would put the city in line with others, such as Seattle and Philadelphia, that have outlawed horse-drawn carriages.

‘Just Transition’ for Drivers

A central tenet of the City Council’s proposal is that the city would be responsible for training and connecting drivers and stable operators with new jobs by 2028, when the ban would be in full effect.

But just what exactly those jobs will be is not clear.

In a video posted to her social media account Tuesday, Menin said she is “actively working on a plan to guarantee them quality employment opportunities in the hospitality industry.” The announcement apparently surprised leaders of the city’s largest hospitality union, which quickly moved to distance itself from the issue.

An official with the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, which represents thousands of hospitality workers in the city and region, told The City Reporter the union is not involved in talks with Menin on the proposed ban. HTC has not taken a public position on the bill.

Horse carriage drivers operate similarly to taxi drivers: They own medallions allowing them to operate in the city, and many do not have direct employers. The workers are not bound by a collective bargaining agreement but pay dues to TWU Local 100. 

The local’s president, John Chiarello, said he’s in the dark about what alternative employment may look like.

“As far as union jobs, I don’t even know what that looks like and I don’t know what it is,” Chiarello said. “But if you’re a horse and carriage driver, I don’t think you want to be a host at a racino, I don’t think you’re looking to do hotel bellhopping or reception.”

Lawmakers have been working behind the scenes with the mayor’s workforce development office to come up with a jobs and training plan for the drivers, a source familiar with the talks told The City Reporter. 

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has said he favors the ban but wants the proposal “to deliver a just transition that protects workers.”

‘A Way of Life’

In front of the West Side Livery Stables on West 38th Street on Wednesday, carriage driver Louis Kammer, 60, said he is sweating his future after working as a carriage horse driver for 32 years. 

“I love the horse, I love the people, I love Central Park,” he said. “I think it’s a way of life.”

But Kammer said he’s at a loss about what else he could do for a living.

“I just want to keep doing what I do,” he said.

As an alternative, union leaders are pushing a separate proposal from Councilmember James Gennaro (D-Queens) that would keep the horse carriages and save worker jobs, but amend morning hours when carriages operate and install hitching posts throughout the park.

“We went into the pandemic with 68 carriages and three stables and we came out with 68 carriages and three stables,” said horse-carriage driver Christina Hansen, a TWU Local 100 representative. “Think of all the New York City businesses that we lost and now you’re sitting here and trying to lose another one.”

David Saltonstall, the Central Park Conservancy’s vice president for government relations and policy, pointed to eight incidents in the park that have involved working horses since May 2025.

“The park is not built for the volume of people we welcome every day to share safely with half-ton animals whose natural instinct is to bolt when spooked,” he said. “No amount of regulation and no single piece of hardware can correct for an animal’s basic instincts.”

Additional reporting by Carol Chen.

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