Horse carriages have been a continuing headache for the mayor, who was unable to make good on an unorthodox campaign promise: that he would put an end to the industry on the first day of his administration.

This summer, the ban on carriage horses appeared all but dead after Mr. de Blasio instructed advocates to lobby the City Council directly, arguing that he lacked the power to change the industry on his own.

Privately, some mayoral allies greeted those remarks with relief. Told on Tuesday of the revived effort, one aide replied, “Ugh.”

Other officials were surprised that Mr. de Blasio would personally involve himself in the cause again. Polls of residents show that the horses, a staple on city streets since Victorian times, remain broadly popular. The effort has pitted Mr. de Blasio against unlikely opponents, including traditional labor allies as well as the actor Liam Neeson.

The mayor declined to elaborate on his views on Tuesday. “I can’t comment on anything until we see if there’s some resolution, and we’re just not there yet,” he said at an unrelated news conference in Manhattan. “We’ve been going back and forth with the Council now for quite a while. There have been some real differences, and we’ve been trying to work them through.”

In his attempts to woo Council members, the mayor has said he made a commitment to his supporters and wants to show he is a man of his word, according to several of the people who described the mayor’s conversations.

Maintaining full-service stables in Central Park, for possibly dozens of working horses, could be a logistically complex undertaking. It was not clear on Tuesday whether officials who oversee the park were aware of the new proposal; a spokeswoman for the Central Park Conservancy declined to comment.