2013 was the last year of the Central Park carriage horses.

On December 30, 2013 newly elected  the 109th and current Mayor of New York Cityde Blasio said at  education press conference:  "We are going to get rid of horse carriages, period “It’s over,” he told reporters in response to an off-topic question.  “There’s some moving parts to work out, but we are going to quickly, aggressively move to make horse carriages no longer a part of the landscape of New York City. They’re not humane, they’re not appropriate for the year 2014. It’s over.”

De Blasio  has hired legal counsel who will deal with the legislative approach. De Blasio  suggested to  replace the horse carriages with electric antique cars driven by the same carriage drivers.

"No tourist comes to New York City just to ride on a horse carriage," Allie Feldman, executive director of NYCLASS, an animal rights group, told CNN.  


Steven Malone, a horse-carriage driver since 1987, told CNN:  "You can't create tradition. You can't create kids coming with smiles on their faces to pet the horses".  Malone and his supporters  plan to fight back.

People like to  ignore real problems and worry about imaginary ones.   Why de Blasio thinks that this subject has such a high priority ?   Is this a this is a good idea at all? Is it important enough to occupy his first days in office?  I do not have the answer.

Tourists love the carriages and tourists  are good for New York.  Kids love to pet the horses.
I spent about an hour on the last day of 2013 on Grand Army Plaza   making pictures for my blog. I saw happy tourists taking carriage rides. I saw smiling kids petting the horses.  I’m not a specialist in the horses health but the animals look healthy and well  fed to me.

Horse-drawn carriage  with the  over 150 years of tradition, heritage  and  history are a symbol to the New York City along with the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, the Statue of Liberty.  The streets packed with traffic are dangerous not only for the horses but for the cyclists and bicycle taxis. Why not to change the carriage routs?  Central Park , with its 843 acres, has enough space !
2013  could be the last year in a more than 100 years of a  horse carriages  history in the Central Park.

Read about the horse carriages in Central Park in my older post.
See the short movie I did on December 31 2013