![]() That’s about 2.43 days for First Class overall an 18 percent increase would lead to an average of 2.87 days. Charts in his testimony indicate that the current average is 2.5 days for single-piece mail and 2.4 days for presort. These delivery time numbers, it may be noted, are slightly different from the data reported by USPS witness Thomas Thress for the Advisory Opinion. Under the latest proposal, the average delivery time would increase 18 percent, to nearly 3 days. ![]() As a result of the changes in standards in 20, it increased to 2.5 days. The average delivery time for First Class mail in the early 1990s was about 1.6 days. In fact, though, the average time it takes to deliver the mail has increased just as steadily as volumes have fallen. Given that First Class mail volumes have declined steadily since 2006, one might think that it would have gotten easier to deliver the mail in a timely way. Together, the two phases added an extra day of delivery time to more than a third, maybe half, of First Class Mail. In January 2015, the “ final” standards were implemented and overnight delivery was ended all single-piece mail. In July 2012 it implemented the first phase of the plan, and the “interim” service standards eliminated overnight delivery for about 20 percent of the mail and added a day to some 2-day mail. The PRC’s Advisory Opinion was skeptical of the USPS cost savings estimate and also recommended “alternatives that would preserve service levels.” The Postal Service went ahead with the plan anyway. In December 2011, the Postal Service again proposed relaxing service standards, this time to make it possible to consolidate over 200 mail processing plants. In its Advisory Opinion, the Postal Rate Commission found that “the Postal Service’s market research, which formed the main justification for the proposal, failed to measure customer preferences accurately.” Plus, said the Commission, “the Service did not present estimates of the cost savings to itself or cost effects on its customers.” Its rationale was that market research indicated that customers preferred “consistency” to “speed.” A slower standard would, the Postal Service said, reduce its reliance on air transportation, which suffered “randomness of failures.” In 1989 the Postal Service proposed reclassifying some destinations from overnight to 2-day service, and others from 2-day to 3-day. This is not the first time the Postal Service has asked for an Advisory Opinion on relaxing service standards. (A dashboard with more details, documents and charts can be found here.) The main rationale for these changes is to allow more mail to be transported by ground rather than air, which takes a day or two more, and to help the Postal Service achieve higher and more predictable on-time performance scores. Much of the mail that is now expected to be delivered in 2 days would shift to a 3-day standard, and a lot of 3-day mail would change to a 4 or 5-day standard. The Postal Service has requested an Advisory Opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission concerning its plan to relax service standards on First Class mail and Periodicals.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |