Anger over horse-drawn carriages using bike lanes in Manhattan

Horse-drawn carriages taking up bike lanes

New York City has recently unveiled a new 10-foot wide bike lane along 10th Avenue, but as it turns out, it's being used by more vehicles than expected. FOX 5 NY's Chris Welch takes a look at complaints about horse-drawn carriages taking up the space.

MANHATTAN - New York City Councilmember Erik Bottcher says his constituents on Manhattan’s West Side have been writing to him "pretty upset" in recent weeks.

It’s because horse-drawn carriages have been hogging the bike lanes that run north on Tenth Avenue. It’s a bike lane that just last summer was widened to ten feet making it one of the widest in the city.

"It’s been a huge, huge plus for the community," Bottcher said. "But now we've got these horse carriages using it every day, hogging up the bike lane, leaving horse poop in the bike lane."

The problem is primarily on the morning commute, cyclists say, when the carriages head to Central Park from their stables in the West 50’s.

"It’s one thing if it happens every so often, but it's literally every day," Bottcher adds.

Cyclist Jonathan Herbert, who commutes into the city from New Jersey and then bikes to work, says it "absolutely" poses a danger, not to mention the nuisance of horse feces.

"You have to navigate around it," Herbert says. "It’s troublesome."

Bottcher says it speaks to the larger issue; he’d like to see carriages phased out of the city altogether.

"We shouldn't have them in bike lanes, and we shouldn't have them in midtown Manhattan traffic. It doesn't make any sense."

He wants the city to be ticketing carriages. Fox5 reached out to the NYPD regarding their ticketing practices for carriage drivers and have not heard back. We also did not heard back from the union representing carriage drivers.