A Dallas City Council committee voted Monday to recommend banning horse-drawn carriages and moving toward alternative mechanical or electric carriage options — for the sake of horses, humans and city roads.
City transportation staff briefed Quality of Life, Arts and Culture Committee members Monday morning on how horse-drawn carriages operate within Dallas. The committee’s last update on the issue in December sparked a continuing debate on whether horses used for carriages are treated humanely, and if the entertainment-driven mode of getting around still fits within Dallas’ busy road system.
Committee chair and District 7 council member Adam Bazaldua said animal safety is important, and he’s already voiced his support of banning horse-drawn carriages for that reason.
This time around, Bazaldua said the city should also be concerned with human safety, citing about five incidents in the past 10 years in which horse-drawn carriages have hurt or endangered riders or other drivers.
“Are we going to be prudent and proactive as a city?” Bazaldua said. “Are we going to modernize and continue our investment so we are truly aligned in a goal to make our streets safer? Or are we going to allow for nostalgia to break logic?”
A measure to ban horse-drawn carriages would still have to go before the full city council for a vote.
Only one company, North Star Carriage, is permitted to provide horse-drawn carriage rides in Dallas, and the city has issued the company five permits so far. North Star gives anywhere from six to 12 rides per night Thursday through Saturday, and its revenue averages between $900 and $1,080 per night, according to the presentation.
The alternatives to traditional horse-drawn carriages include carriages powered by mechanical propulsion, which originated in the 1800s, or electric carriages, currently used in Mount Dora, Florida.
City code requires horse-drawn carriages to only work eight hours max in a 24-hour period — the same as San Antonio — with 10 minutes of rest per 50 minutes of work. That’s compared with New York City’s cap of nine hours and a 15-minute rest period per two hours of work, and Austin's cap of six hours a day, five days a week with a minimum 24 hours of rest.
After random carriage inspections last August, transportation inspectors found carriage operations stopped in rainy conditions and when temperatures rose above 99 degrees Fahrenheit or when the thermal heat index exceeded 150 degrees, as required.
North Star owner Brian High told the Dallas Morning News his company follows those rules, treats its horses with care and could even work with the city to lower that temperature limit, but he said banning horse-drawn carriages would put North Star out of business.
The ground horses tread matters too, staff told committee members. While concrete is more stable and easier to walk on than dry dirt, it can lead to joint stress and discomfort for the horses.
Whether electric or horse-drawn, the carriage options take up the same amount of space on the road. But District 13 council member Gay Donnell Willis said horses inevitably add more risks to consider on roads that are also accommodating cars, trucks, scooters, bikes and pedestrians.
“If you’re talking about a vehicle that has some kind of shock absorption,” Willis said, “that has a rubber tire that is more malleable to go through some of these uneven surfaces versus a hoof and a foreleg, it’s just sounding like that is a way to keep the benefits that have been outlined — you know, all of the charm and the things that people like and all of that — but take out an element that can’t really respond as well to our own road conditions.”
While District 14 council member Paul Ridley said he supported more regulations for the sake of horse safety, he said given how few horses there are and the fact that they travel on regulated routes, it's not worth taking the nostalgic experience away from riders.
“If we're to replace the horses with people as drivers, that's not the safest alternative either, given our record of fatalities from motor vehicle collisions, given our record of DWIs,” Ridley said. “At least we don't have to worry about the horses imbibing.”
Still, a motion to recommend banning horse-drawn carriages passed, and Bazaldua asked for staff to come back with another presentation on how the city can work to incorporate alternative carriages on the roads.
"I would like to see that coupled with how we can take action, again, to allow for a more modernized opportunity so that we aren't taking action that is directly impacting an industry but instead requesting for a shift in the model of the industry, if you will," Bazaldua said.
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