Politics Behind the Horse Carriage Debate

0:00 Speaker 1 Let’s go to Central Park and with us. Today’s Christina Hansen taking care of the carriages in Central Park, and can you give us an update where you are because I don’t hear good things. I understand the city Council’s not with you. I understand the Mayor’s not with you.

0:18 Is there any hope what the heck is going on?

0:21 Speaker 2 Well, we are kind of wondering what the heck is going on because the carriage horses, of course, are very well taken care of. Nothing about that has changed. And we had a hearing yesterday, but it took almost three hours for any of the carriage people or the TWU folks to even get to testify before the committee, and

0:40 a lot of the committee left before the carriage drivers could share their stories about what they would lose with this bill, and council people were signing on before the hearing was even done. The of course, the speaker came out the day before and said that she supports this wholeheartedly.

0:57 So we are wondering what in the world is going on here because just actually the only thing that’s really changed recently is, you know, we did have this tragic accident, but it’s the first one ever, and as a council member, Dela Rosa said, Look, we’ve had a helicopter accident where a whole family of tourists was family and tragically killed,

1:20 and we didn’t ban helicopter. We didn’t rush out to do something. You know, there seems to be a lot of stuff going on here that has nothing to do with safety, and it has nothing to do with the care of the horses.

1:32 Speaker 1 Wnor Patterson, you’ve been in the studio with us, tell us what you feel. I mean, I love those verses in Central Paul.

1:38 Speaker 3 Well, I’ve lived in New York myself for fifty years, and I think I can’t count the number of times that visitors came to see me. And in addition to the restaurants and the theater and that kind of thing, one of the connections to that is going to Central Park and riding in the horse car. And in those days,

2:01 I never even thought it was possible for it to be an accident like that. So I’m I was not really sure how I feel about this. Christina, Maybe you could enhance my understanding. You did say that there hadn’t been any accidents of this site of this kind in a long time, right, right.

2:25 Speaker 2 Well, in any kind of sort of collective memory of the Central Park carriages that rides to tourists in Central Park, we’ve never had a fatality. So going back well before World War Two, you know, maybe somebody got into a carriage accident in the park in the eighteen eighties when there were lots of private carriages in the same way

2:47 that people might have car accidents or bicycle accidents or e bike accidents back then. And obviously no e Byke’s then. But I mean in terms of like, maybe there was an accident, but in terms of a tourist in a carriage in Central Park, is happened until you know, a month ago.

3:03 Speaker 3 And in that respect, so what you’re really saying is that what happened a month ago, as tragic as it was, it was an outlier. It was.

3:14 Speaker 2 Go ahead, I said, absolutely an outlier. But these various special interest groups, and there’s a lot of money behind it, whether it’s the animal rights people who, no matter what we did, think that you should just shouldn’t have horses anywhere in the city. A lot of the testimony yesterday was saying horses don’t belong in cities, even though horses

3:37 built cities. And even though the City of New York employs police horses to patrol Times Square, Madison Square Garden lead the Knicks Parade, you know, there was no discussion about that, but lots of discussion about how horses just don’t belong in modern cities. They just don’t belong here anymore.

3:55 Speaker 1 I understand some real estate guys I have heard four there’s some real estate guys really want your property to pursue to build new kinds of property. So is this a real estate ploy? Have they taken care of the politicians that be to make sure that you get rid of the buns on Eleventh? Have you?

4:20 Speaker 2 Yeah? I mean obviously that was what got build a Blade to involved. You know, twelve years ago when he became mayor, was the stables on the west side of thirty sevenths and thirty eighth Street. There’s zoned for seventy stories there, mixed fuse luxury high rises, and since that time they’ve actually demolished the buildings between it. But those

4:45 them see, lots really can’t be built on so long as there are horses there. So there’s lots of real estate interest in getting rid of the carriage horses. Because those that property there would soon will be right on the Hudson Wivard Park Park that they’re building over the Amfract lines.

5:04 Speaker 1 And I also hear that there’s some people that want to create electric cars to be in the in central pot.

5:13 Speaker 2 Yeah, there’s a whole discussion about electric carriages. There was a discussion about electric cars. Now they moved to electric carriages, which.

5:19 Speaker 1 Is just now, what’s the name of the company. What’s the name of the company. They’re supposedly making big donations in Albany, in the city.

5:29 Speaker 2 Well in the city, I mean, well, there’s the organization n Class makes lots of donations. But there’s also a gentleman named Josh Fox who’s given donations and met with Randy Mastro last year about electric carriages or some sort of replacement for the churices. Of course, there’s people that donate to the conservancy. We don’t even know who they

5:53 are because the conservancy, being a five oh one C three, doesn’t have to disclose its donors. But after one hundred sixty eight years of the park being designed for horse carriages, came out and said we’re against carriages. We don’t want horses in our park anymore.

6:09 Speaker 1 Well, Why don’t you get somebody to do an investigation how many donations did these people make? And then we could tell you you could turn it over, you could turn it over to the US attorney to do something about it.

6:22 Speaker 2 Yeah, we’re certainly working all these angles because there’s something definitely missed with what’s going on with the conservancy. And of course you know, I mean the the proliferation of e bikes and the speed and the various delivery services that race through central parks. It’s alienation of public parkland through Amazon cargo. Bike deliveries is not a park use,

6:45 and they’ve basically taken over the carriage drives. That space is now all for e deliveries and people can’t even cross the carriage drives. They can’t use the carriage drives for even recreational bike rides.

6:59 Speaker 1 You just can’t. Yeah, now or out of time, Governor you maybe you will look into it together. We will find out where the donations are going, who’s making donations, and Christina Hanson, let’s hope that the common sense prevails or otherwise we’ll turn it over to the powers that be that will do the investigations.

7:21 Speaker 3 It’s one hundred and twenty two years ago. It deserves being looked at some more.

7:25 Speaker 1 Yes, absolutely, thank you so much, Christina Hanson, and you’re with the TWU Transport Workers Union and you’re the shop steward and let’s pray you save those jobs and save those horses.

7:40 Speaker 2 Absolutely, we got to keep going to the Central Park. It’s the heart of the city.