Latest / The Animal Advocate / Philadelphia Bans Carriage Horses. Will New York?

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Philadelphia Bans Carriage Horses. Will New York? · The Animal Advocate

0:00
On Wednesday afternoon in Central park, an 18 year old
0:04
named Romanch Mahajan got into a horse drawn carriage
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with his family. He was visiting New York from India. The
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driver climbed down to take a photo of the family in
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the-carriage. And while he was doing that, the horse
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bolted. The-carriage tore through the park, clipped
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another carriage near a tavern on the green and flipped.
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Before the-carriage flipped, Romansh was thrown onto
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the pavement and hit his head. He died from his injuries
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that evening. I want to stop there before I talk about law
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or politics, because a young man is dead. He was
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18, he was on vacation with his family and he died
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doing something New York City still sells to
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tourists as charming. That's the lie at the center
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of the-carriage horse industry. It asks the
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public to see nostalgia. What's really there is a
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large, powerful animal in a crowded urban
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environment, surrounded by traffic and people,
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noise and bicycles, sirens, cameras and
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children. It only takes one spook, one mistake,
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one unattended moment, and the result can be
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irreversible. The driver's own union was quick to
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tell us where to put the blame. He broke a rule. They
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said a driver's never supposed to step away from
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the horse and this one did, to take a photo.
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The union called it unacceptable, said it supported a
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full investigation and called for better driver
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training and tougher exams. And let me give them their
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due. The driver who walked away to take that picture
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will live with it for the rest of his life. And the rule he
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broke is a real rule. But look closely at what the
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union's doing there. They're pinning it on one man and
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one mistake so that the fix becomes more training, not
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no horse-carriages. That's exactly what they want you
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to think. When the safety of passengers, pedestrians,
2:07
drivers and the horses themselves depends on no human
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ever making a single mistake around a frightened 1800
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pound animal in a crowded park. The system
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itself isn't safe. It's just waiting to
2:22
fail. And this week it failed on a teenager.
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One week earlier, Philadelphia chose not to keep pretending.
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On June 11, city council voted to ban horse drawn
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carriages. I helped get that bill passed and today
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I want to talk about how we did it. Because the how is the
2:42
lesson. Then I want to talk about why New York,
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where a young man just died, is so much harder to move.
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And what advocates need to do before this moment
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slips away. Welcome to the Animal Advocate
2:57
where we arm animal lovers with the information and
3:00
inspiration you need to become effective advocates.
3:04
I'm your host, Penny Ellison, and and I've taught animal law and
3:07
Advocacy at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006.
3:12
If you've ever thought someone should do something about that,
3:16
I'm here to guide you on your journey to being that
3:19
someone. You can find us on the
3:22
web@animaladvocacyacademy.com
3:25
and that's where you'll find show notes and resources. And you can
3:29
send us your comments on episodes and ideas for topics you like
3:33
to hear on future shows. So on to today's
3:37
topic.
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Back in February, I sat down with Janet White, founder of
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Carriage Horse Freedom., for an episode called From
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Protest to Policy. We'll link to that in the show notes.
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Janet spent nine years working on this issue in
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Philadelphia, from street protests to drafting
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legislation to coming up with a viable alternative, an
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e-carriage named Carline. After that interview, she
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asked me to help get Philadelphia's bill across the
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finish line. So I didn't watch this one from the outside. I
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worked on it. And I want to tell you how we did it. Because
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running a commercial horse drawn carriage in
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Philadelphia is now illegal and punishable by a fine of
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$1,000 a day. And here's how that became
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law. For decades, the fight in Philadelphia wasn't a fight
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to ban carriages. A ban wasn't on the table. There
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were-carriage companies, horses, drivers who needed the
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work and a tourism industry that kind of liked that. Clip
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clop past Independence Hall. Any council member who
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proposed shutting it down could be accused of killing jobs
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over a problem that many voters never really thought
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about. So advocates did something smart. They didn't hold
4:59
out for the perfect bill. They took what they could
5:03
get, kept the issue alive, and built the record. So in
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2000, after a carriage company was convicted of animal
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abuse, Councilman Frank DiCicco pushed through tighter
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rules. The temperature cutoff dropped from 94 degrees to
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92.2 degrees. That didn't solve the problem because the
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problem was never only the temperature. The problem was
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the practice. Janet made exactly that point when we
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talked. Drop the temperature a few degrees and you
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haven't fixed the danger of putting horses in traffic.
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But that small change still mattered because it put the city
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on record that these animals needed protection their owners wouldn't provide
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voluntarily. It built a foothold and it kept
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the issue alive in City hall during all the years when the votes for
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anything bigger weren't there. That's patience.
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Not patience as in just waiting around patience
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as the discipline to bank partial progress, keep the
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door open, and be ready when the political winds change.
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And eventually, the winds did change. In
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2017, a court injunction shut down one of the two
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operators over building code violations and abuse claims.
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In 2023, the last remaining company closed,
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too. The owners sold the stable to a developer and
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walked away. Carriages had been on Philadelphia's streets since the
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1976 bicentennial. And now, for the first time
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in 50 years, the city had no carriage businesses left.
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Now, let me be clear about something, because I don't want you to take the
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wrong lesson from this. Those closures weren't a strategy.
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The first company got shut down by the city over the conditions in its
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stable. The second one closed because a developer wanted the
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land it sat on and apartments were worth more than horses.
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That's not advocacy. That's luck. The strategy was everything
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that came before it. The years Janet spent
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building the record, the relationships, the documented
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violations, and the electric carriage alternative,
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all of it. So that when Luck finally cracked the door open,
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there was a finished, vetted, coalition backed ban
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ready to push through before anyone could refill those
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stables. Luck made the opening readiness
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made it law. Think about what those closures did
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to the politics. For decades, the strongest argument against a ban
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was jobs ban. Carriages put drivers out of work,
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hurt people just to help horses.
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That's a real argument, and it won over a lot of council members.
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But once both companies were gone, the jobs argument
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evaporated. There were no drivers left to displace,
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no business organized to fight back, no industry standing in
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front of council saying a ban would destroy working families. The
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thing that had protected the carriage trade for decades, its economic
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footprint, was simply gone. Now, a
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weaker advocate might see that and think, the fight's over, the
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company's closed. Why pass a law against something that isn't
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happening? When I asked Janet that question whether she still needed the
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ban, her answer came back instantly. Of course we
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do. Because nothing stopped a new company from just opening
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tomorrow. She understood that an empty field
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is when you build the fence. The absence of carriages wasn't
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a victory. It was an opening. That was the
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moment to make certain no one could ever put horses back on the
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streets pulling tourists in Philadelphia. The
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opening you're waiting for doesn't always announce itself.
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Sometimes it looks like nothing's happening at all. So
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that's when we moved. And then in the weeks before
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the vote, another problem surfaced. Videos
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started circulating of individuals running horse drawn carriages on South
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Street. That's a very busy pedestrian street. And these
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weren't the old carriage companies. They weren't necessarily formal
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businesses. They were people operating in ways that looked
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genuinely unsafe. That mattered, because a bill that
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only banned Commercial carriage businesses might not reach
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someone giving rise for free or claiming not to be operating as
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a business at all. So we pushed to close that
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gap. The final law bans commercial horse
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drawn carriages outright if someone wants to operate a non
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commercial animal drawn carriage. In other words, if someone
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claims they're giving rides for free, they have to be licensed and
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inspected by both the Department of License and Inspections and and the
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city's animal control agency. Now think about the practical effect
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of that. You can't charge for rides, you have to get
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licensed, you have to be inspected, you have to satisfy two
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separate agencies and you have to expose the whole operation to
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city oversight. Are people likely to go through all that
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so they can give free carriage rides? Probably not.
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That's why this is in practical terms a ban. It
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outlaws the business model and makes the supposed non commercial
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alternative so regulated, so limited and so
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unrewarding that it's unlikely to become a backdoor.
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That's what good legislative work looks like. It doesn't always
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look like the cleanest first draft. Sometimes, as
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it did here, it looks like starting out with something handed to
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you that's less than perfect, spotting the loopholes
10:38
before the vote, pushing hard enough to close them,
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and accepting language that gets you the protection you need without
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blowing up the whole bill. That's the needle we
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threaded. Compromise isn't
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surrender and it isn't a dirty word done right.
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It's how a long running campaign becomes a law on the
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books. And then there's New York.
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If public safety is the argument, New York should be the easy
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case. The accidents there aren't hypothetical and they
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aren't rare. Before Ramansh Mahajan died this
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week, a horse named Rider collapsed on a Manhattan street in
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2022 and was later euthanized. A
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horse named lady collapsed and died pulling a carriage. In 2025, a
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horse named Bambi spooked and ran riderless through
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Central park with passengers still aboard. And eight
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days before Ramansh was killed, a horse named Denise
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collapsed and died in the park after eating a toxic
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ornamental plant growing along the curb. The Central
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Park Conservancy counted seven horse related
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incidents in just 13 months. By every measure we used
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in Philadelphia, the case is already made. And yet New
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York's council has enacted Ryder's Law. The bill that
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would phase out the carriage industry and replace it
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with electric carriages has been introduced,
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reintroduced and killed last November. It died in
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committee on a 4 to 1 vote despite the backing of the
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sitting mayor and broad public support.
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Why? Because of the one thing Philadelphia didn't have
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at the end an operating industry with organized political
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power behind it. The carriage drivers in New York
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are unionized, roughly 180 of them represented by the
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Transport Workers Union. They're by and large working
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immigrants supporting families. And the union frames any ban
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as an attack on blue collar jobs. That's a potent
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argument, and it isn't a dishonest one. These are real
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livelihoods, and it's exactly the argument that blocked Philadelphia
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for decades. It's the argument that disappeared in Philadelphia
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only because the companies closed on their own. In
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New York, the businesses are open, the unions
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organized, and so far the politics haven't tipped toward
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a ban. So the strongest argument for a ban,
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public safety, keeps running into the strongest
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argument against one jobs. And in New York, jobs has been
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winning. But this week's events may change that.
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Pressure will be high to take some action, and when the
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pressure builds to address an issue, the real risk isn't
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the ban loses, it's that it never gets voted on at all.
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When a tragedy creates pressure, politicians can't
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ignore anymore, but they still don't want to support a
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ban. They reach for something smaller, something that
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lets them look responsive without taking on the
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industry directly. Right now in New York, that
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something has a name. It's a competing bill introduced
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the same day as the latest version of Ryder's Law, and
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it's backed by the driver's union. It wouldn't
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ban carriage horses. It would adjust conditions,
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let drivers start earlier in the morning when it's cooler.
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Order a study on hitching posts that might make it harder for horses
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to bolt. Commission another study years down the road
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on safer routes. That strategy is how
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momentum for a ban dies, and it's used all the
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time. Offer a softer alternative that's easy to live
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with and the industry never has. To win the argument against a ban,
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lawmakers pass the smaller bill, call it reform, grab
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a headline and move on. That's the trap.
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And I want to be fair. Better conditions aren't nothing. Cooler hours
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matter. Studying safety is a good thing,
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but none of it answers the question that matters. Would
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any of it have prevented this tragedy or any of the others?
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A hitching post study doesn't change the fact that a horse can bolt.
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Cooler morning hours don't change the fact that a 2,000 pound
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animal not built for hard pavement is navigating
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city streets that plenty of people are afraid to even drive on.
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Enhanced driver training, the very thing the union asked for this
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week, doesn't change it either, because the whole danger
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is that it only takes one lapse, one time.
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A future study on what routes might be safer doesn't
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touch the danger built into the practice itself.
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A modest fix is often not a step toward a ban.
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It's the opposite. It's what gets passed instead of
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a ban. Then the pressure lifts. We've dealt with
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it. The headlines fade. The industry survives,
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the carriages keep rolling. And that's why the
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distinction underneath these two bills matters so much.
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I'm going to put my professor hat on now. Just briefly, there
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are two different ways to come at the use of animals. One
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is the animal welfare approach. It accepts that we use
16:06
animals and asks how to make that use less cruel
16:09
or less dangerous. Bigger cages,
16:12
cooler working hours, better inspections. A
16:16
study on hitching posts. The other is
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closer to an animal rights approach. It asks a different
16:24
question. Not how do we treat the animal better while we
16:28
use it? But whether we should be using the animal this way
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at all. So welfare asks how.
16:36
Rights asks whether solutions
16:40
that seek to end a use entirely are
16:43
extraordinarily hard to get past. The reason's almost always
16:47
the same. The uses advocates most want to end
16:50
tend to have industries behind them. Businesses,
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jobs, money, trade groups,
16:57
unions, tradition, political
17:00
relationships, Factory farming, animal
17:04
testing, puppy mills, and yes, in New York, a
17:07
unionized carriage horse industry. When money,
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labor and tradition all line up to defend a use,
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a legislature will rarely vote to end it outright. So
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advocates get pushed again and again toward the welfare
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compromise. How about a little more room? A
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lower temperature cutoff? Another study.
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A safer route, A better rule around the edges
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of the same practice. And my friends in the animal rights
17:37
movement use that fact to argue that
17:41
laws are a dead end for animals. They say legislation can
17:44
never deliver what we really want. To truly protect animals,
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it can only deliver an endlessly, slightly less cruel
17:52
version of the same uses. For years,
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I've pushed back on that pessimism about law as an avenue for
18:00
change. With one example, carriage horses.
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Yes, I'd say welfare reforms are easier to pass than
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bans. Cooler hours are easier to pass than ending an
18:12
industry. But with carriage horses, the welfare
18:16
fix doesn't solve the problem, because the core danger
18:19
isn't the temperature, it's the horse in traffic.
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And unlike so many other animal use issues, ending
18:27
the use of horses to pull tourists around cities has broad
18:31
public support. And that's the most important thing.
18:35
People may disagree about food systems or the use of animals in
18:39
research, but a lot of people already understand
18:43
that horse drawn carriages in a modern city are
18:46
unnecessary, dangerous and cruel.
18:50
And law does not create
18:54
public opinion. Public opinion leads
18:57
law, so you can get a ban where you have the
19:01
public opinion behind it. So this, I often
19:05
told my animal rights friends, is the case where law can
19:09
do the bigger thing if you time it right.
19:13
Philadelphia just proved that. So here's what I want to say to
19:17
everyone in New York who's been waiting for the right moment to act.
19:20
The moment is now. You're not waiting for
19:24
an empty stable. You're not waiting for the industry to collapse on
19:28
its own the way Philadelphia's did, because it won't.
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Your opening is a young man is dead,
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the public is paying attention, and a new mayor took
19:40
office, having campaigned on getting these horses out of the park.
19:44
That's the crack in the door. And here's the part that should give you
19:47
hope, not despair. The hardest piece of
19:51
the work is already done. New York doesn't have to draft
19:55
a bill. The bill already exists. Ryder's Law is sitting
19:59
on the table right now. Reintroduced, championed,
20:02
ready to move next to the welfare bill that was filed the
20:06
very same day. The readiness Philadelphia spent nine
20:10
years building. New York already has. So this isn't a
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question of whether New York is ready. It's a question
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of whether the council spends this moment on the law that ends the
20:21
danger of or lets it slip away into a
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study and an earlier schedule.
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And openings like this one don't stay open. The
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grief fades, the headlines move on,
20:37
and the industry is betting it can run out that clock.
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The welfare bill is the dead end my animal rights friends
20:45
always warned me about just dressed up as progress,
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the equivalent of a slightly larger cage.
20:52
Writer's law is the harder, better path. And the
20:56
unbearable truth is that a young man's death may have
21:00
just handed that harder path its best chance in
21:03
years. The question is whether New York's City
21:07
Council spends that chance on a Hitching Post study
21:11
or on ending the practice that that put Ramant Mahajan in
21:15
harm's way. So what do we take from all this?
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First, public safety can move an animal protection law further than
21:23
welfare alone. The danger a frightened, huge animal poses
21:27
to people reaches voters and lawmakers. That an animal
21:30
welfare argument does not move. Second, you
21:34
don't always get to wait for your opposition to collapse. Philadelphia's
21:38
jobs argument disappeared when the companies closed. New
21:41
York's won't. So the opening becomes a shift
21:45
in public attention instead. And you have to seize that before it
21:49
fades while the opposition's still in the room.
21:53
Third, an empty field is a great time to build a fence.
21:57
We did this twice in Philadelphia. The carriage ban was one. The
22:01
other was banning the retail sale of puppies and kittens, which we passed
22:05
during a window when no pet store in the city was selling them.
22:09
The absence of a harmful practice isn't the same thing as a
22:12
law preventing its return. Lock in the win while
22:16
no one's fighting back. And finally,
22:20
beware of the animal welfare bill offered as a substitute for
22:24
the ban. Modest improvements can sometimes be real
22:27
progress. Those dogs in Pennsylvania's puppy mills are probably
22:31
better off with exercise and health requirements than without them.
22:35
But a welfare bill can also be the thing lawmakers
22:39
pass to relieve pressure and avoid the harder
22:43
vote. The question is always whether the reform
22:46
prevents the harm or just manages the optics. If
22:50
those lessons hit home and you want them laid out
22:54
in more detail, I built a free private podcast
22:57
series that walks through the principles behind
23:01
campaigns like this one and the practical
23:04
mechanics of moving an animal protection law
23:08
into your own town. The episodes are short, and
23:11
you can listen to them on a walk. If you've ever
23:15
thought someone should pass a law like that in my
23:19
city, this is how you become that someone. Go to
23:22
animal advocacyacademy.com 4Cs to download it.
23:26
That's F O U R C S. For your Be the Change Action this
23:30
week. Pick one animal use in your own community that
23:33
everyone treats as normal carriage rides, maybe pony
23:37
rides, Petting zoos. Animals used in festivals or
23:41
carnivals or other kinds of entertainment. Then ask
23:44
one question. Is this a use we should be making safer,
23:48
or one we should be ending? Because hope isn't a policy.
23:52
And after this week, no one should need another reminder of that.
23:57
Philadelphia shows what happens when advocates are ready and the opening
24:00
comes. New York shows what happens when a city keeps
24:04
kicking the can down the road. Delay isn't
24:08
neutral. Every day, New York waits. The carriages
24:12
keep rolling, another horse gets put back between the shafts,
24:15
and another family climbs in because the city's told them it's safe
24:19
enough. So no, this isn't the week for
24:23
a study. It isn't the week for a softer schedule or a better
24:26
hitching post. It's the week to say plainly that
24:30
some uses of animals can't be made safe enough, humane enough,
24:34
or modern enough to justify keeping them.
24:37
Philadelphia waited for the field to empty. New
24:41
York probably won't get that luxury, which means doing
24:45
the harder thing, building the fence while the field
24:48
is still full. And for every advocate listening,
24:52
that's the work. Build the record. Watch for that
24:56
opening. And when the moment comes, don't settle for
25:00
the smallest thing they'll give you Ask for the law that
25:03
prevents the harm. I'm here to help.
25:07
That's it for today. The Animal Advocate is brought to you by the
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Animal Advocacy Academy. If today's episode got you
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thinking about what you can do to change things for animals, I
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want to make sure you know about the four Cs of legislative advocacy for
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Animals. It's a free audio series I put together
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that gives you a real framework for making legislation happen.
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You can find it at
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animaladvocacyacademy.com
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4Cs that's 4Cs f o u R.
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