In response to your April 4-10 editorial “Horse Sense,” back in the 19th century, the horse carriages were not competing with cars, buses and taxis on city streets. The horses were confined to Central Park.
Today, the horses walk through congested city traffic from as far away as 38th Street and 11th Avenue. They breathe in the fumes from the tailpipes of cars and buses. The argument to make this acceptable is that we all breathe in these fumes.
But the rest of us are not walking alongside and in back of the vehicles with our noses next to the tailpipes. Building stables in Central Park is something that just is not going to happen. A new stable was built in Central Park to house mounted patrol horses.
The stable, opened in 2011, has only five stalls and was built at the expense of $700,000. There are approximately 200-plus carriage horses working in New York City at any given time.
The money and space to house at least 194 more horses does not exist, and the facilities would take a long time to build provided that the project was OK’d by the Central Park Conservancy, which was responsible for the restoration of Central Park and is responsible for the day-to-day maintenance and operations of the park.
Teresa Russo
Staten Island
