Horse-drawn carriages in cities are finally coming to an end
Many tourists love being driven around a foreign city in a horse-drawn carriage. What sounds so romantic is uncomfortable for the animals. After Rome, other metropolises are now also considering alternatives. Even robotic horses are under discussion.
Popular, but no longer up-to-date: a carriage in front of the Hofburg in Vienna
Source: JOE KLAMAR/AFP/Getty Images
So a horse-drawn carriage ride in nature is a comfortable thing – like with the covered wagon over soft forest paths in the Uckermark, on the stagecoach through the muddy mud flats to the island of Neuwerk or as recently on the way in the Lüneburg Heath. The horses snort as they walk on the sandy soil, the spokes of the wheels crunch, the coachman clicks his whip and his whip stands unused in the holder on the coachman’s box just for decoration. Incidentally, driving through the nature reserve is only permitted with such horse-drawn vehicles.
In principle, horses have no problem with being used as draft animals. In the country at least, far away from traffic. But horse-drawn carriages really have no place on the streets of the inner cities. Neither in New York nor in Boston, Brussels or Bruges, Vienna or Salzburg, Berlin, Dresden or Nuremberg.
Even if city visitors appreciate the nostalgic sound of hoofs clattering on asphalt and cobblestones when they let themselves be driven. clip clap. What sounds so romantic, however, is unpleasant for the animals: horseshoes have no shock-absorbing effect. You have to imagine it like jogging on heels. However, because horses cannot walk “barefoot” on hard rock for long because the horn would wear off too quickly and they would have to limp, their hooves are shod with iron.
The traditional blinders in front of the eyes are also an anachronistic accessory, which holidaymakers expect to have as a kind of coach equipment, but is completely pointless, at least for single-horse carriages, i.e. horse-drawn carriage rides. They ensure that the animals with their large viewing angle can more or less only stubbornly look straight ahead.
This is only useful, if at all, as a so-called whip aid for pairs. This means: If one horse is reprimanded with a whiplash, the other animal should not notice this punishment, so that it doesn’t startle and shy away.
Even Vienna is thinking about horses for carriage rides
But now a rethinking is finally beginning in many cities. Clip clap off! Using horses to drive vacationers through inner cities is no longer considered appropriate. Rome banned it in 2020, and now Palma de Mallorca is following suit. By 2024, horse-drawn carriages should no longer drive in the island’s capital. By then they will be gradually replaced by electric carriages. The first horseless wagons will start in March 2023.
New York also wants to ban the popular $160 tours through Central Park. A new draft law envisages replacing the horses with electric carriages by June 2024. “Manhattan is probably the worst place in the world to put a horse to work, in traffic, in noise, in pollution, in excruciating heat,” New York City Councilman Robert Holden wrote in his bill.
Even in Vienna, the future of the famous Fiacre is being discussed. There, by the way, the animals are only allowed to work four days a week. The first electric carriages are already there, and robotic horses are already being considered there, with clip-clapping sounds and blinkers.