CINCINNATI – Horse-drawn carriages aren’t the idyllic stuff of fairytales as some may believe, according to the creator of a new online petition seeking to have them banned from Cincinnati.
Instead, they describe “horses crowded into a cramped pen, far too small for the number of animals it contains” and filthy conditions inside. They claim that’s the reality in a pen in “a rotting, industrial section of Cincinnati’s West End.”
About a day after the petition was published online Tuesday, more than 1,300 supporters had signed.
They’re hoping to convince the Cincinnati City Council to pass an ordinance banning the operation of horse-drawn carriages in city limits.
WCPO reached out to Elegant Carriages, an operator of horse-drawn carriage rides around Cincinnati, Covington and Newport, but no one was immediately available to comment.
There have been past proposals to ban the carriages, fueled in part by crashes involving cars.
In one particularly high-profile incident last year, a woman was thrown from a carriage and left hanging over the side of the Taylor-Southgate bridge when a car hit the carriage. A second crash involving a carriage happened just 26 hours later.
