The Briefing
- New York City's Council voted 40 to 7 on October 22, 2026, to permanently ban horse-drawn carriage rides in Central Park, with a hard deadline of June 2028 for all operations to end and an immediate freeze on new operator licenses.
- The legislation, known as Romanch's Law, was named after an 18-year-old Indian tourist killed in a Central Park carriage accident on June 17, 2026, and also bars horse owners from selling animals to slaughterhouses or other carriage businesses.
- The Transport Workers Union, which represents approximately 150 carriage drivers, has threatened a federal lawsuit over what it calls constitutional violations, and disputes the bill's worker transition provisions as inadequate.
A Decisive Vote Years in the Making
New York City's Council closed one of the most contentious policy fights in its recent history on October 22, voting 40 to 7 to permanently end horse-drawn carriage rides in Central Park. Two members abstained. The legislation — formally called Romanch's Law — sets a hard deadline of June 2028 for all carriage operations to cease, while barring the issuance of any new operator licenses in the interim.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani collaborated with Council Speaker Julie Menin to shape the final version of the bill. Mamdani expressed public support for the measure, and the 40-to-7 margin is veto-proof in any case. The legislation also prohibits carriage horse owners from selling their animals to slaughterhouses or transferring them to other carriage operations once the ban takes effect.
The Death That Broke the Deadlock
For years, horse-drawn carriages managed to outlast every political challenge. Three consecutive New York mayors expressed support for some form of ban, only to watch momentum fizzle before a council vote materialized. The calculation changed on June 17, 2026, when 18-year-old Romanch Mahajan — visiting New York with his parents and younger brother on a trip from India to celebrate his high school graduation — was fatally injured during a carriage ride in Central Park.
The family had arrived from India just two days before the accident. His father, Deepak Mahajan, described the carriage outing to NBC News as part of their first days of sightseeing in the city. The driver had stepped away to photograph the family near a fountain when the horse bolted without warning.
Romanch's mother, Priya, was thrown from the moving carriage. Attempting to reach her, Romanch jumped from the vehicle and struck his head on the pavement. The runaway horse then drove the carriage into another horse-drawn cab, causing it to flip onto its side. He was rushed to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, where he died that afternoon. Priya and the rest of the family sustained only minor injuries.
Both the Central Park Conservancy and the Transport Workers Union confirmed afterward that Romanch was the first person to die in a carriage-related accident since the rides were introduced in the park over 165 years ago. It was also, the Conservancy noted, the eighth horse-related incident in or near the park in the preceding 13 months.
Building Momentum Under a New Name
The tragedy crystallized a coalition that had never fully aligned before. The Central Park Conservancy — which had already backed a carriage ban in August 2025 over public safety and road-damage concerns — reinforced its position with fresh urgency after Romanch's death. Speaker Menin moved quickly to schedule a council vote, characterizing the rides as "a growing public safety liability" in an increasingly congested park.
Mayor Mamdani, who had taken office at the start of 2026 with a skeptical view of the industry, declared publicly that the carriage business was coming to an end in New York City. The bill was subsequently renamed Romanch's Law in the teenager's honor, converting what had long been an abstract debate over animal welfare and urban planning into something with a human name and a face.
Workers Left Holding the Reins
Despite the wide vote margin, the ban has created genuine anxiety among the roughly 150 licensed carriage drivers and their families, who face an uncertain transition ahead of the 2028 cutoff. Under the legislation, city agencies have until April 1, 2027, to establish a workforce transition program. The bill specifies job referrals — including placements at agencies such as the MTA and the Port Authority — alongside career counseling, hiring fairs, and educational opportunities. The Mamdani administration has also said it will consider compensation for drivers and medallion holders, though no amounts have been committed to.
The Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents approximately 150 carriage drivers and stable workers operating under 68 city-issued medallions, has been unsparing in its opposition. TWU International President John Samuelsen called the bill "a train wreck of constitutional and due process violations" and labeled it outright "theft" — arguing that operators had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in city-issued medallions that would now be rendered worthless without compensation. The union's lawyers sent a formal letter to City Corporation Counsel Steve Banks on the eve of the vote, warning of a federal restraining order the moment the bill was enacted.
Samuelsen also said the legislation provides "no meaningful economic relief for workers," and the union has confirmed it will pursue a federal challenge, arguing the uncompensated taking of city-issued licenses constitutes a Fifth Amendment violation. Union representatives called the worker transition provisions "weak measures" and questioned whether job fairs and counseling could realistically replace the livelihoods being eliminated.
An Industry Approaching Its Final Lap
Carriage rides have been a fixture of Central Park since 1858, the year the park itself opened to the public — predating the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, and the city's subway system. At its height the industry supported hundreds of drivers and maintained stables clustered near the park's southern edge. In recent years, the sector had contracted to roughly 150 active operators and nearly 200 city-licensed horses.
Romanch's family, still based in India, appeared before the City Council by videoconference to advocate for the ban, and several relatives were present in chambers the day of the vote. Whether the city can build a genuine transition for the workers who sustained this 168-year tradition — or whether the effort dissolves into prolonged federal litigation — will be the next chapter of a dispute that has never been just about the horses.
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