The days of mail carriers walking up to every single-family home may be coming to end in new housing developments in Cranberry and elsewhere, postal officials say.
The U.S. Postal Service recently told township officials that, to streamline mail delivery and save money, they plan to require installation of cluster box units.
Township officials are not pleased.
“This could pose a real challenge for us. Does it mean one single mail center for 100 homes or double mail boxes? Where do you put it? Who builds it? How much parking will it need? Who does snow removal?” asked Ron Henshaw, Cranberry's director of community development.
About a dozen new developments are in various stages of planning in Cranberry, one of Western Pennsylvania's fastest-growing municipalities.
Tad Kelly, a Postal Service spokesman for Western Pennsylvania, said moving to more centralized delivery sites is inevitable.
“It's cost-effective and safer for our employees. Mail volume is dropping, and we have to provide universal access at low cost. Something has to give,” Kelly said.
According to the postal service, the annual cost of individual delivery per household is $358. Delivery to a centralized site costs $168 annually per household.
Henshaw worries about how such facilities will be incorporated into neighborhoods along with adequate parking and lighting. He also says quick delivery of emergency services depends on clearly marked curbside addresses.
“We are telling developers who have plans under way in Cranberry that they have to work this out with the post office,” Henshaw said.
The postal service, a government corporation, is organized like a business but subject to congressional oversight.
“Congress has prevented the postal service from doing things that would save money, such as closing smaller and under-used post offices,” said Karen Mazurkiewicz, a postal service spokeswoman in Buffalo, N.Y.
Congress this year blocked efforts to eliminate Saturday delivery.
The Postal Service is losing $25 million a day and faces billions in looming health care and pension costs for retirees.
The volume of first-class mail has dropped 28 percent since 2007, according to the Postal Service. In the past two years, it has recorded $21 billion in losses, including the default of $11.1 billion in payments to the Treasury Department.
Mazurkiewicz says cluster box units have been around for about a decade.
“There are fewer of them in older and more traditional cities like Pittsburgh and Buffalo than there are in places like the Southwest and Florida, where there has been more residential home development,” she said.
In the few locations in the area with cluster box units, people say they don't mind using them.
“We don't get much mail, so it's not a big deal,” said Mark Olsen, who works at Levin Mattress on Route 19 in Marshall, where area businesses use a cluster box.
“Of course, I'd rather have mail brought to my home than pick it up at a box like that,” said Olsen, who lives in Ross.
Rick Wills is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-320-7944 or at rwills@tribweb.com.
