As bikes and strollers fill Central Park, its managers want to push horse carriages out.

 

The nonprofit that manages Central Park has thrown its support behind a proposal to end the horse-drawn carriages that have been fixtures in the greenspace for more than 150 years. 

 

For more than 150 years, horse-drawn carriages have been trotting through Manhattan's Central Park, weathering the arrival of the automobile, years of criticism from animal rights activists and even a mayoral administration that vowed to ban the tourist activity. But now the influential nonprofit that manages the 843-acre park — and has previously stayed out of the debate — has now thrown its support behind a proposal to wind down the industry as early as next summer.

The Central Park Conservancy argued in an Aug. 12 letter to the City Council that horse carriages have an outsized impact on public safety and road infrastructure in the increasingly crowded park. “We can’t be just frozen in time,” said Elizabeth Smith, the conservancy's CEO, in an interview this week. “Horses are too unpredictable and the roadways are too busy with too many different kinds of users now — bikers, runners, pedestrians, strollers.”

Smith noted other cities have done away with the nostalgic rides, including San Antonio, which passed a five-year phase out of the industry last year. Chicago banned it starting in 2021 and Montreal did the same the year prior.