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Also lifetime involvement with horses, riding (hacking, on the flat, some jumping, pleasure).
I no longer ride as I don’t have adequate time to spend but all that being said, I have seen the cabs in Philadelphia and New York; I have also seen their stables. They are horrifying. There are horse rescues that take them and give them a lovely life after being abused, not only in the cities but also on the track. They are saved from slaughter and in many cases given to people who have lovely farms where these horses are set out to pasture, never ridden again... just let be to enjoy each day, so yes, I do have experience and yes I have seen these up close and personal and no they are not all well-groomed in a lot of cases and they do not enjoy this life in most cases riding up and down city streets exhaust in their faces and on hard surfaces. Visit some rescues online and see the real story. Thank you

You must have been looking at different horses. My hotel was right on Central Park South (Essex House), stand out front, two very nice looking Belgians and some rather nondescript heavy grade horses in dapple gray and bay. I'm sure not every horse in NYC has a dapper turnout, but they looked perfectly acceptable to me.

Do you know if they have the sorbothane pads? That would alleviate any concussion from the streets, as in parade horses that spend a lot of time on asphalt.

Can't do anything about the exhaust, don't know how anybody stands it.

But I question whether the total ban advocated by deBlasio is necessary. If the stables are that bad (and the photos I've seen just aren't. Nothing great to look at, but adequate) then it would seem to me that you assign a couple of inspectors from AC or THS and cite the owners, get them before a magistrate judge and give them X number of days to remediate, with a substantial fine to be remitted on proof of cleanup. The magistrate can also mandate sorbothane pads and hours off duty or in the park to alleviate exposure to exhaust.

The fact that nobody has done this, and that investigation has turned up nothing citable, tells me that deBlasio is angling for the real estate for one of his cronies.

But as for your second point, the horse rescues are completely overwhelmed. It would be nice if all those horses had "lovely farms" to go to, but they are much more likely to end up in a can. The banning of slaughter even for incurably lame or debilitated horses has had the unintended consequence of filling up the rescues with horses, then the excess are trucked to Mexico, where instead of a quick humane end in a properly inspected slaughterhouse, they ride for hours jammed together in stock trailers designed for cattle, kicked, bitten or trampled as likely as not, then beaten to death (maybe) with a sledge hammer and dropped down a chute, possibly while still alive.

Or their owners simply turn them loose to be hit by traffic or starved. We used to come down to the south pasture in the morning worried that we might find tire tracks at the gate and missing horses - now we find tire tracks and 2-3 horses that we never saw before. They're always lame and sometimes emaciated, often sick. Rescue won't take them - so now what?

You have to think these things through. Properly vetted and inspected, those horses will lead a better life in NYC than being dumped or butchered.

. . . and, by the way, you can't have had much involvement with the care and maintenance end of horsemanship (as opposed to just hacking a rented horse around) . . . or you would know that turning your average racehorse or high bred saddle horse out to grass is pretty much a death sentence, even with grain.

They can't subsist on that low a caloric content, they need regular work to stay in shape, and they quickly become rank without the handling and human contact. I think the draft crosses and heavy harness breeds tolerate it better, but Standardbreds and Hackneys are pretty much in the same boat as the TBs.

I have worked with OTTBs as well as a racing bred broodmare that was taken to the sales at age 14, unbroke. I took her on as a project horse and did the entire Noel Jackson method on her, never a buck in that girl and she went on to become a very successful hunter and event horse. We retired her at 27 with a vague unsoundness that the vet could never pinpoint, she went to the Special Olympics where she had a ball with the kids, and when she became too lame even for that despite the best care, we turned her out to pasture. It was not a success. Even with supplemental feeding she was losing weight steadily (and getting downright cranky), we had to find her a spare box stall at a friend's stable. She eventually died in her sleep at 32. Great old mare, best horse I ever had.