Petition: He Was 18 and Trying to Help His Mother. Now the Bill to End NYC Carriage Rides Carries His Name.

Romanch Mahajan was eighteen, visiting New York from India with his family to celebrate his high school graduation. On June 17, 2026, they took a carriage ride through Central Park. The horse bolted without a driver and the carriage toppled. His father Deepak told the City Council last month what happened next, speaking by video from India: “We couldn’t do nothing but hold on to each other and scream. My wife fell. Romanch tried to help his mother and he, too, fell. He never moved again. I kept shouting his name, but he did not.” Days before that, a 16-year-old carriage horse named Deniz had collapsed and died in Central Park after eating a poisonous plant. In 2022 a horse called Ryder collapsed on a Manhattan street and died months later. The bill that would end the industry was named for Ryder. It has now been renamed Romanch’s Law. Please sign the petition urging the New York City Council to pass it.

✍  Sign the Petition

Something has shifted this time. Intro 943 would stop the renewal of two-year licenses for the city’s 68 horse-drawn carriages, ban operation in Central Park, and fully prohibit the industry from June 2028, while the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection runs a retraining program for the roughly 150 drivers affected. It now carries 26 sponsors, and on July 14 Julie Menin became the first sitting Council Speaker in the city’s history to publicly back a carriage ban. The Health Committee hearing on July 15 ran close to ten hours. Supporters point to eight serious carriage-related incidents in two years and a 2022 poll showing 71 percent of New York voters want the industry gone, alongside Philadelphia, Chicago, Biloxi and Key West, which have already ended theirs. Robert Holden, who introduced the original version four years ago, put the delay starkly: his bill would have banned carriages on June 1 of this year, and Romanch died on June 17. The opposing case deserves stating too. TWU Local 100, which represents the drivers, says they are largely hardworking immigrants who care for their horses and are being attacked by monied interests, and a competing bill would keep carriages running with stricter training and hitching posts instead. One Green Planet covered the earlier version of this legislation in our petition on Ryder’s Law, and the hearing testimony is reported by CBS New York. The bill now heads toward a full Council vote.

✍  Sign the Petition Now

Sign These Urgent Petitions!

• Petition: The Senate Voted 38-0 to Close the Puppy Mill Pipeline. The House Quietly Took It Out.
• Petition: Two Million People Signed. The Court Agreed. France Is Bringing Back the Bee-Killer Anyway.
• Petition: Europe Has Burned an Area the Size of Luxembourg. Nobody Is Counting the Animals.