Hold your horses

Bill de Blasio promised the animalrights activists who poured money into his 2013 campaign that on Day 1 as mayor, he would put the Central Park carriage horses out to pasture (or send them to the glue factory). Ever since, he’s been struggling to deliver.

He proposed a ban, but the City Council balked. Then he offered mythical stables in the park to tear down the horses’ West Side lodgings, which also failed. Next, he pushed the hack line off Central Park South into the park to reduce their visibility and undercut their viability. Fares and income are down as fewer tourists are taking rides and others are getting dragooned by pedicabs who lie about the horse carriages and steal their business.

With a mayor intent on destroying a beloved age-old trade, Council Speaker Corey Johnson must pull the reins on a bill that applies a misfit heat-and-humidity index to far too tightly regulate when the 68 carriages can operate, despite no documented cases of carriage-horse heat stroke or heat injury in 30 years. The Teamsters, representing the drivers, oppose the bill.

The so-called Equine Heat Index is from polo. Those thoroughbreds race over grassy fields at top speed with people on their saddles waving mallets. Draft horses are bred for stamina, not speed, and are pulling carriages at a modest pace.

How about shifting to an early start time to avoid midday heat? And cracking down on the pedicabs?

Both would be better not only for horses but for their human partners. Yes, humans. Remember them?