New York is one step closer to taking tourist horse-drawn carriages off busy, polluted streets

Representatives of City Hall and the Central Park horse-drawn carriage industry are still working out a deal

City Hall is closer to a deal to get horses off busy, polluted streets (Getty)

New York City is one step closer to taking horse-drawn carriages for tourists off busy, polluted streets as City Hall and Union represenatives battle out a compromise to keep drivers’ jobs and move the horses to a new stable.

Sources say that New York City Hall and Central Park’s horse-drawn carriage industry are nearing agreement on a deal that could maintain the carriage drivers’ jobs but also take animals off the city streets.

According to am New York, the compromise would bring to an end a long, ongoing debate that started more than two years ago when Mayor Bill de Blasio vowed to move the horses to greener pastures and called the tourist horse rides “inhumane”.

“It’s over,” he told a news conference in 2013. “We are going to quickly and aggressively move to make horse carriages no longer a part of the landscape in New York City."

Mayor de Blasio faced backlash from drivers and from a more unlikely source - Irish actor Liam Neeson said it would be “unconscionable” to deprive the drivers of their livelihood.

The union that represents around 300 drivers and stable workers, Teamsters Joint Council 16, is reportedly working to find a new home for around 75 horses in a stable within Central Park.

The move would take away the need for the horses to travel from their West Side stables to the Park alongside motor vehicles and traffic pollution.

The mayor’s office, the Union spokesman and the activist group behind the campaign, NYCLASS, decline to comment for am New York.