The mother and father of a youngster who tumbled to his loss of life from a breakaway horse carriage in Central Park final month will this week plead with the Metropolis Council to banish the vacationer commerce from the park.
A Wednesday listening to on the way forward for horse-drawn rides which have been Central Park fixtures because the 1860s follows the June 17 loss of life of Romanch Mahajan, whose family members plan to testify remotely from India about their quest to have New York Metropolis be a part of different cities which have outlawed horse carriages.
“Our household is totally shattered,” mentioned Gaurav Mahajan, an uncle of the 18-year-old vacationer, a current highschool graduate. “We live in a state of profound shock and agony that we might by no means actually be capable to overcome.”
The teenager’s loss of life marked the eighth time since Could 2025 that horses within the park have been concerned in on-the-job incidents — with the newest marking a possible turning level within the contentious, long-running marketing campaign to section out the carriages.
Metropolis Council Speaker Julie Menin and Councilmember Lynn Schulman (D-Queens) known as for the listening to on a invoice from Councilmember Christopher Marte (D-Manhattan) to ban horses from the park.
“We actually consider a ban on this harmful business is nearer than ever,” Mahajan mentioned.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has additionally mentioned it’s time for the horses to go, following a path taken by his two most up-to-date predecessors at Metropolis Corridor, Eric Adams and Invoice de Blasio. Any ban must be finished in tandem with the Metropolis Council and would comply with the lead of Philadelphia, San Antonio and Montreal.
“They’d the political braveness to say, ‘All proper, it’s 2026, we don’t want this anymore,” Marte mentioned.
His proposal — newly renamed as “Romanch’s Legislation” — would create a roadmap for locating new jobs for near 200 horse-carriage staff.
“It’s all the time been the (earlier mayoral) administrations making guarantees of ‘We’re going to ban this sometime, we’re going to do one thing sometime,’” Marte informed The Metropolis Reporter. “That is the primary time that we’ve the Council keen to play ball — that is the furthest it’s ever gone and I feel we will take all of it the way in which.”
The invoice has the extra backing of the Central Park Conservancy, which oversees the 843-acre park, and which, till final August, had by no means advocated for a ban since being based in 1980. However it additionally faces fierce opposition from Transport Employees Union Native 100, which represents a few of the horse-carriage staff.
“We take an curiosity in defending the lives and the households that we characterize,” Alexander Kemp, administrative vice chairman for TWU Native 100, informed The Metropolis Reporter. “I don’t suppose that we get to find out which one in every of our members we’re happy with turning into homeless, that’s actually not a luxurious we’re afforded.”
A separate proposal from Councilmember James Gennaro (D-Queens) wouldn’t shut down the carriages. The measure, backed by Native 100, would save the roles of staff represented by the union, amend the hours when carriages function within the morning and require hitching posts all through a park that had greater than 42 million guests in 2025, in line with the Central Park Conservancy.
“That’s greater than Disney World,” mentioned David Saltonstall, the conservancy’s vice chairman for presidency relations, coverage and neighborhood affairs.
Critics mocked the concept to tether horses to hitching posts within the park as “complete nonsense.”
“There’s merely no quantity of elevated regulation or coaching or hitching posts which can be going to stop the following horse from spooking and bolting and killing somebody once more,” mentioned Edita Birnkrant, government director of New Yorkers for Clear, Livable and Protected Streets, a non-profit animal-rights group that has lengthy opposed horse carriages. “There’s merely no solution to forestall that.”
Saltonstall mentioned the conservancy feels it “can now not be impartial” on the difficulty within the face of the variety of horses which have busted free within the park.
“We’ve been saying this for nearly a 12 months,” he mentioned. “And I feel each time we mentioned it, we have been like, ‘Please, let there not be one other one in every of these incidents,’ and right here we’re.”
The conservancy final week launched the outcomes of an internet and text-message ballot that confirmed near 70% of the 834 New Yorkers surveyed assist laws to bar horse-drawn carriages from working within the metropolis.
The union fired again on social media that the ballot was “a load of horse manure” and that different surveys discovered “sturdy assist” for retaining the carriages within the park.
Romanch Mahajan’s loss of life got here days after a 16-year-old horse died on the park’s West Drive after ingesting what a necropsy launched by Native 100 described as a “substantial quantity” of needles from a Central Park plant that’s “extremely poisonous” to horses.
Kemp mentioned the union is “begging for extra regulation” and cited its requires a veterinarian to make rounds in Central Park, extra entry to water for the horses, extra coaching, warmth safety and the development of recent equestrian stables that may not take land used for leisure functions.
He added that the union is open to reforms, whereas accusing critics of seizing on the teenager vacationer’s loss of life to pursue the aim of ousting the horse carriages.
“We’re not in disagreement that there must be a dialog — I don’t suppose that somebody can die and also you simply say, ‘Hey, let’s go on with enterprise as ordinary,’” Kemp mentioned. “We acknowledge that this was a horrible tragedy hooked up to an business and that they’re using this as their lynchpin to try to fulfill twenty years of them making an attempt to erode the business.”
{The teenager}’s uncle mentioned the household will proceed to push for a everlasting memorial within the park and for laws to oust the horses.
“We want this business stopped eternally,” Gaurav Mahajan mentioned. “That’s the solely legacy worthy of our heroic boy.”
