NYC cyclists rage about horse carriages blocking new bike lane to Central Park
It’s not a stable situation.
Fuming city bikers are calling a lane violation on Hudson Yards horse carriage drivers making their way to Central Park.
Cyclists complain that the buggies are clogging up a newly widened stretch of bike lane on 10th Avenue between West 38th and West 52nd streets, forcing them to slow down or weave out of the pathway entirely.
“I don’t want to get kicked by a horse,” said cyclist Dhaval Powar, 34, of Hells Kitchen. “I use the bike lane on 10th Ave almost daily. It’s useful and makes me feel more safe but not if the horse riders are there.”
After that point, the bike lane again narrows and carriages merge back into normal car lanes.
A Post reporter watched 15 carriages trundle down the heavily trafficked stretch on Friday, with 10 of them using the expanded bike path and five staying in the roadway.
Several cyclists were forced to abandon their dedicated lane to get around the slow-moving buggies.
Carriage driver Alex Eden Uzun, 30, told The Post that he regularly hears from angry bikers who tell him to clear out of the stretch.
Rider Dhaval Powar, 34, of Hells Kitchen says he uses the 10th Avenue bike lane daily.
“It definitely doesn’t feel safe,” Powar said, adding: “I don’t want to get kicked by a horse!”
But Udun said carriage drivers have no good options along the route and are subject to spite no matter where they navigate.
If they use the car lanes, cabbies scream at them to trot elsewhere.
“Cabs don’t like us because we are slow. We only go 5 mph. It makes more sense for us to share a lane with bikes than cars,” he said.
Udun said he’d rather field biker complaints than put his horses at risk.
“It’s good for the horses and good for the traffic,” he said. “Some cyclists yell ‘get out of the bike lane’ but we don’t occupy the whole bike lane. Cyclists can get past us easily.”
In addition, Udun argued that carriages clog up car traffic to maneuver around double-parked trucks, which makes the bike lane an even more attractive option.
He also noted that careening e-bikes that use the special lane pose a far greater risk than his animals.
“We have seen so many electric bikes crash with pedestrians, it’s happening once or twice a week, but you’ll never seen a horse crash with a pedestrian,” he said.
One cyclist backed his opinion, asserting that the bike lane could host both beast and bicycle.
“It’s better the horses around cyclists than a—hole drivers,” said Chad Tucker, a daily user of the 10th Ave. bike lane.
Tucker, who used to be a horse carriage driver in Charleston, South Carolina, added: “It’s much safer for the horses. The horses should be protected. “
But city councilman Erik Bottcher ripped the carriage drivers for using the path and called for NYPD intervention if necessary.
“The horse carriage drivers are using our bike lanes as their personal express lanes to the Park. We just had a bike lane put in on 10th Avenue and we’re getting lots of calls and people sending in photos of the horse carriages in the bike lanes,” Bottcher said in a statement. “It’s called a bike lane, not a horse lane.”
