SAN ANTONIO – After months of deliberation, a recommended plan to phase out horse-drawn carriages was presented to city council members Thursday afternoon.

While no official vote will happen to keep them or not, this is the first time the City Council has been informed of an actual plan.

The latest discussion of a possible ban came when the city launched an online survey in July to gauge San Antonio residents’ support for the trolleys.

After nearly 50,000 responses, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted in August for city staff to create a plan to phase out horse-drawn carriages within one to three years.

Background:

A city council committee wants the carriage to come without a horse on the streets of San Antonio.

The five-member Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted unanimously Monday to have city staff develop options on how to phase out horse-drawn carriages within one to three years. The staff presentation to the full board will take place in a non-voting discussion session by the end of October.

The decision came after an online city poll received nearly 50,500 responses, with 52 percent supporting a ban. The other 48% were split between keeping the carriages in operation as they are, extending them outside the city center or moving them to city parks.

Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2), who co-sponsored the original ban proposal in November 2022, called for the phase-out plan to include options to support the purchase of electric, “horseless” carriages.

Such carriages cost about $20,000, San Antonio Police Deputy Chief Rick Riley said.

“I would like it to be as quick as possible,” McKee-Rodriguez told reporters after the meeting. “We want to be fair to business owners, of course, and we want to be reasonable about the kind of support we can provide. You know, what a transition period would look like, I’m very interested to see what those one-year and two-year options look like.”

Proponents of the ban have cited animal welfare and trafficking concerns as driving reasons for a ban. At the same time, transport companies have said they are unfairly criticized and say they treat their animals well.

The trolley companies also say they have offered alternatives, such as reducing hours or the number of trolleys on the street at any one time.

Stephanie Garcia, who owns Yellow Rose and HRH Carriage Companies, said the plan to phase out horse-drawn carriages within three years would “bankrupt us”.

“We have invested a lot of money in these companies. So one to three years is not realistic,” she said.

Garcia also doesn’t trust the city’s survey results, which he said were spread outside of San Antonio.

A New York-based “cat behavior expert” with 2.2 million followers urged his followers to vote in the poll if they were in San Antonio. Inverse, Cavalry Groupwho lobbies for animal businesses, also posted the survey on its Facebook page and encouraged followers to take it, noting that the survey “does not require the participant to be a San Antonio constituent.”

KSAT too previously confirmed Garcia’s claim that the survey could be taken multiple times by opening it in “incognito mode.”

City spokeswoman Alana Reed said that while 11,000 responses came from duplicate IP addresses, that doesn’t mean the same people responded each time.

The city’s network IP address came up 72 times, she said, as an example, but that shows respondents were connected to the city’s WiFi network.

“So what we found was that there was no evidence that single respondents submitted multiple responses to influence the outcome of the survey,” Reed told KSAT. “And we can’t guarantee that respondents didn’t take the survey on multiple devices, or using different browsers or in incognito mode. But we find that the data gives a sufficiently broad picture of how stakeholders feel about the proposal.”

Assistant City Manager Alex Lopez outlined possible transition options for trolley operators, including learning to operate electric trolleys, becoming a new tour guide operation, preparing for a new career through the city’s Ready to Work program or getting a loan to- and start their own activity. business through LiftFund.

Lopez said the options the city has considered so far have focused on trolley drivers, not owners.

Other members of the 11-member city council said they also support banning horse-drawn carriages, and Garcia said she’s “certainly not optimistic” about what will happen once it goes to the full council.

McKee-Rodriguez’s co-sponsor for the ban, Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran (D3), seemed to reverse course in Junesaying she is open to compromise. However, she was back on board for a full ban on Friday, when she and McKee-Rodriguez sent a memo calling for a three-year transition plan.

“As stated on Monday, this is a lawsuit,” KSAT counsel said in a statement sent by a spokeswoman. “This will be a compromise with the wagon operators that will help the switch to electric wagons. As co-authors of this CCR, I think it is important to believe the outcome of today’s committee. Because of the ongoing construction and survey results, we don’t see horse-drawn carriages moving into the downtown area.”