New York City's horse-drawn carriage drivers are being regulated out of existence after Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin struck a deal to ban the trade from the five boroughs starting June 2028.
This is the latest working-class industry put on the chopping block by politicians who campaign on empathy but deliver pink slips — in a city that can't keep its subways safe or its streets clean, but somehow finds the time and votes to kill jobs that have fed families for generations.
The council will vote October 22 on the bill, now renamed Romanch's Law after 18-year-old tourist Romanch Mahajan, who died this summer when a horse got spooked and threw him. His father, Deepak Mahajan, pleaded before the City Council in July: "If [the prior legislation] had passed, the carriages would have stopped on June 1, 2026 — Romanch died on June 17. This was not an unpredictable accident. Let his death not be in vain."
The family's grief is real. But politicians are using a single freak accident to shutter an entire industry — one that has operated in Central Park since before these lawmakers were born. Animal rights advocates have pushed this ban for years, claiming horses are overworked, easily spooked, and kept in inadequate stables. The New York Post noted that multiple horses have collapsed, died, or run loose over the past year. Previous failed bills were named after Ryder, a horse that collapsed and died in August 2022.
Carriage drivers and owners have consistently denied the mistreatment claims, arguing the animals are well cared for and the stables are up to code, according to CNN. Their side of the story has gotten considerably less airtime than the activists'.
City Hall spokesperson Sneha Choudhary said the administration has been "working closely with the City Council, union partners, carriage drivers, animal welfare advocates, and community leaders to deliver a just transition that protects workers while ending horse-drawn carriages in Central Park once and for all." The phrase "just transition" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Workers have heard that promise before — usually right before they're shown the door.
Menin framed the ban as a public safety issue, telling Politico: "Horse-drawn carriages have long been part of New York City's history, but in an increasingly busy Central Park, this tradition has become a growing public safety liability." Council Member Christopher Marte, the bill's prime sponsor, called the industry "unsafe and outdated."
CNN framed the story as a measured policy shift with input from all stakeholders. The Post highlighted the emotional weight of the teenager's death and the bill's renaming. Neither outlet spent much time on what happens to the drivers — the actual working people — once the carriages stop rolling.
That's the open question. A city that can't fix its infrastructure or control its crime rate has decided its top priority is putting stable hands and carriage drivers out of work. The horses get "human futures," as Marte put it. The humans get a promise of transition.
