COALITION
TO
BAN HORSE
DRAWN CARRIAGES
News
NYC HORSE ADVOCATES SEEK TO BAN HORSE-DRAWN VEHICLES
P R E S S R E L E A S E
For Immediate Release: 13 February 2006
Contact: Edita Birnkrant (917) 940-2725;
edita@friendsofanimals.org
New York City—A Coalition including Friends of Animals and other groups has united with the goal of enacting a ban on horse-drawn carriages in Manhattan.
WHY BAN HORSE-DRAWN VEHICLES IN NEW YORK?
Many modern cities have ended the tradition of animal-drawn vehicles. The main reason is that animals do not belong in commercial activity that forces them to compete with heavy traffic or be exposed to harsh elements. These reasons apply as strongly in New York City as they do anywhere in the world.
WHY NOT JUST ALLOW ANIMAL-DRAWN CARRIAGES AT CENTRAL PARK?
Horses travel to and from the stables located on 9th and 10th Avenues, between W. 37th and W. 52nd Streets. As coalition spokesperson Edita Birnkrant pointed out in the New York Daily News (14 Feb.), “That’s where the majority of the accidents happen.”
Keeping commercial horse activity adjacent to Central Park, as Council Member Tony Avella’s newly proposed legislation seeks to do, fails to acknowledge that horses would still travel this congested corridor -- also a route for emergency vehicles to and from St. Vincent’s Midtown Hospital and Roosevelt Hospital, and a conduit for many vehicles going to the Lincoln Tunnel or the West Side Highway. The tragic accident in January that severely injured a carriage driver and left a horse dead happened on this very route back to the stables from Central Park.
Avella’s legislation focuses on regulating the activity and not ending it. The historical urge to reform the horse-drawn carriage industry is a dangerous pattern.
Regulating the practice has not stopped, and will not stop public safety problems. And it seeks to sustain a disrespectful practice that needs to be ended in order for New York City to join Toronto, Paris and London as leaders in more enlightened attitudes about animals.
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