Prep to corral horses in park
The time is nigh for Central Park’s carriage horses to giddy up.
City Transportation Department workers began tearing up sections of Manhattan’s Grand Army Plaza on Friday to make way for a new horse stand.
The work came just a day after Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron ruled in favor of the city’s plan to relocate the horse carriages and their drivers inside Central Park and away from spots along 59th St. that they’ve occupied for decades.
Christina Hansen, 38, is hoping a separate legal action filed by herself and six other carriage drivers will prevent the city from forcing the horses inside the park.
“We were seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent them from implementing this rule on the grounds that the stands they’ve designated were unworkable and unsafe for the horses,” she said Friday.
Some stands will be moved to Seventh Ave. in the park, a move Hansen says was made to “reduce our visibility.”
“They want to put us in the center lane,” she said. “They don’t want them by the side so people can pet the horses, talk to the drivers.”
The battle over horse carriage drivers plying their trade in the city began to pick up steam during the 2013 mayoral race. Mayor de Blasio pledged to ban carriages on day one of his administration if elected, but that proved difficult.
A ban went nowhere in the City Council, but de Blasio’s administration used rule changes to begin the process of moving the carriages into the parks — a concession animal rights activists felt they had coming to them after the mayor’s 2013 rhetoric.
On Friday, Hansen suggested that constituency and hers have not been given equal treatment.
“We get a pothole, we complain about it, it takes a month to fix it,” she said. “The mayor wants a horse stand, there’s 30 people out here.”