Mayor de Blasio's plan to ban carriage horses outside of Central Park is far from a done deal: at a hearing on Friday, city council members lambasted the bill for its lack of transparency and the negative effect that it would have on the carriage horse and pedicab industries.
Queens Councilmember Van Bramer was the most scathing in his criticism, scolding: "The administration did a piss-poor job here today in explaining their case and defending this legislation."
The proposed deal, which de Blasio announced on Sunday in conjunction with City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and representatives from the Teamsters union representing carriage horse drivers, would reduce the number of carriage horses from 180 to 95 by October, 2018, when a new stable would open in Central Park. The bill would also ban pedicabs in Central Park below the 85th Street traverse, a twist that has enraged pedicab drivers who argue that this will give carriage drivers a monopoly and effectively put pedicabs out of business.
As became rapidly apparent throughout Friday's hearing, which lasted nearly seven hours, there are several problems with the deal as it currently stands. City council members were concerned that the administration could not guarantee the Central Park stables would be completed by October 2018, at which point the numbers of horses would have already been reduced and their current stables on the West Side sold. There was considerable concern regarding the unexpected clause about pedicabs, given that pedicab drivers said they had not been consulted. And animal rights activists would rather see carriage horses banned altogether, though they see the reduction in numbers as a step in the right direction.
It was also clear that the Teamsters union—with whom de Blasio jointly presented the deal earlier this week—is not happy with the deal, but merely sees it as the lesser of two evils when it comes to either reducing or altogether banning carriage horses.
"What we have here today is what we call a classic shotgun wedding," Brooklyn Councilmember Greenfield said when addressing representatives from the Teamsters union. "That's what it is. You and your industry is at the barrel of a shotgun and you are forced to come to the altar, and as a result of that you are getting married to folks of different perspectives, and, as tends to be the case in a shotgun wedding, no particular party is happy."
Though Demos Demopoulous, the secretary treasurer speaking on behalf of the Teamsters, declined to answer nearly every question thrown his way by city council members, he did say that reducing the number of horses and the number of hours they can be worked would lead to a loss of somewhere between 40 and 50 jobs, representing a 25 percent cut in the industry. When pushed by Greenfield, Demopoulous admitted that no, the Teamsters are not happy with the current deal, but thought it was the only alternative to de Blasio's initial plan to abolish carriage horses completely.
More vocally in opposition to the deal were pedicab drivers, who comprised the majority of the 110 members of the public who delivered testimony. Unlike carriage drivers, pedicab drivers are not unionized.
"Not surprisingly, we weren’t consulted a single time by the mayor or by anyone involved in writing the bill," said Laramie Flick, president of the New York City Pedicab Owners' Association. "If there are any perceived problems with pedicabs they should be addressed in a separate bill."
When pressed on whether pedicab drivers could pick up new customers in Times Square once carriage horses are banned from that area, pedicab driver Ibrahim Donmez adamantly disagreed, arguing that Uber has taken over more than 75 percent of business for pedicab drivers in the midtown area. The council seemed sympathetic to these concerns, with numerous members expressing support for legislation that would be more lenient on pedicabs.
"We close a deal with the Teamsters, but we're opening another front with the pedicabs, and even though they're not organized, they are a large group," said Manhattan Councilmember Rodriguez. After hearing testimony from Mindy Tarlow, the mayor's director of operations who repeated the party line of "trying to strike a balance" between the competing industries in the park, Rodriguez stepped up his support for pedicab drivers, saying, "To ban [them] from south of 85th street is too much. I hope at the end of this process for the pedicabs also to be part of this conversation."
