Good. We (Montreal) did that some years ago and nobody misses it - tourists, operator, citizen and very likely the horses too. You think it's a staple until it's gone, then you realize it was just animal abuse for profit.
Also, it is a lot better for tourists than having horses faint or die on the pavement in front of your kids - which is bound to happen more frequently with the weather becoming warmer.
This is a bigger deal than it might sound. Despite lots of consensus that the horse carriages are bad, it has taken years to get this done. It infamously stalled during De Blasio's mayoralty too, for example.
This is also an L for the TWU, and I suspect there will be more of those to come in the following months.
He's doing this because an Indian tourist was killed by a horse - they are quite notorious for being hit by trains, jagannatha etc.
Some people say that it's because forcing horses to work in a dense, heavily polluted urban environment is cruel, but I don't see these rules being applied to Sarah Jessica Parker.
I'll get my coat
Good riddance, let’s see this play out
They for some reason made the area around Central Park more sophisticated
Liam Neeson (yes, that one) wrote an op-ed defending these carriages in the NYT, back in 2014:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/opinion/carriages-belong-...
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Meanwhile, another city with iconic horse-drawn carriages, Vienna (where the carriages, unlike in New York, actually use city streets), is debating whether the horses should get a day off if temperatures rise above 30° C (currently it's 35°), and only a few officials are meekly suggesting that a complete ban might be considered at some point in the future.
https://www-ganz--wien-at.translate.goog/wien/news/pro-contr...