The fine folks at NYClass want to get the carriage horses off the mean streets of NYC and for good reason. The inhumane treatment of the animals is reason enough, but the health and safety hazards the horse drawn tourist industry presents need to be mitigated. They have got a pretty good idea...and a long over-due one. Let's give these animals a break, AND give the industry a better way to make some money, keep the tax revenue stream to the city in tact and offer a non-poluting way for folks to see Central Park. Sounds like a win-win-win situation to me.

NYClass unveiled a model of the electric cars that would replace the horses today at Manhattan's Hippodrome, where, ironically, circus horses once performed.

Here's a snip from the Times coverage:

NY-Class, which stands for New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets, paid $12,500 to have the two-foot-long lime green model built. It is based on turn-of-the-20th-century cars. Lanterns perch on its sides. Tiny baskets that would carry a driver's lunch or extra blankets hang from it. Its convertible top rolls back in sections. The car is intended to hold up to six tourists.

Since its founding in 2008, NY-Class has been promoting "replacing" the city's carriage horses with 68 electric cars, one of several proposals by animal-rights advocates over the years to get rid of the carriage horse industry, which they say is inhumane.

Last year, a City Council measure pushed by NY-Class was introduced that would gradually phase out carriages horses and create a new class of for-hire low-emissions vehicles called "show cars" that would resemble antique cars, operate from a fixed place in the city and charge rates competitive with carriage-horse rates.

They have a petition you can sign to help grab the attention of the City Council (they already have 13 sponsors for their legislation to stop this abuse) and they have a touching twitter account that tells the view of the streets of NYC through the eyes of a carriage horse...and it's not a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers romantic movie.

Give the organization and the horses some love. Follow their twitter feed, sign the petition, and like them up on facebook. You won't be sorry.