New York, Unhitched
On October 22, the City Council voted 40–7 to end the horse-drawn carriage trade. After nineteen years of failed bills — and after Ryder, Deniz, and Romanch Mahajan — the city finally decided that a horse is not scenery. It deserves a cheer. The work isn’t finished.
There is a sound that has belonged to Central Park South for as long as anyone alive can remember — the hollow clop of shod hooves on asphalt, keeping time under the taxi horns. Tourists film it. Postcards sell it. Movies use it as shorthand for romance, for old New York, for the city at its most cinematic. And for most of us, most of the time, the horse making that sound has been closer to scenery than to someone: a living prop, harnessed to a story we tell about ourselves.
On Thursday, October 22nd, the New York City Council voted to end it. Romanch’s Law — Intro. 943, carried by Council Member Christopher Marte — passed 40 to 7, a veto-proof majority. No licenses will be issued or renewed; the ones that exist expire on May 31, 2028; and on June 1, 2028, the horse-drawn carriage comes off the streets of this city. By June 1, 2027, every owner of a licensed horse must certify to the Health Department that the animal will not be sold for slaughter, or into another carriage business, or for any other inhumane purpose. The administration owes the drivers a workforce transition plan. Mayor Mamdani, who reached the deal with Speaker Julie Menin earlier this month, put it as plainly as anyone has: “The horse carriage industry is coming to an end in New York City.”
