It could be true that this is the normal cycle of moving boxes from low-use to high-traffic areas, as claimed. Without transparency, it's hard to be sure.
Even that transparency would not be demanded were the postmaster general not actively and deliberately taking a role in make USPS services worse. With the status quo, nobody would care about 13 boxes removed in Missoula, Montana.
So either the USPS needs to be clear about what they're doing and when and why, or they need to improve service so much that people assume the best, rather than the worst.
> USPS has a free API that gives you the location of every collection box.
Do you have a link for this? It would be useful for filling out post box information on openstreetmap, I'd think. I found the USPS "Web Tools API"[0] but it seems to focus on pricing, tracking, and address verification. I didn't see anything about querying USPS locations (except for package pickup).
I may have slightly misremembered. I can't find it in their officially documented APIs either.
However if you inspect your network traffic while doing a search on their "Find locations" page, it's not too hard to find the address of their REST API. However since it's not documented it might be rude to hit it too hard
> It could be true that this is the normal cycle of moving boxes from low-use to high-traffic areas, as claimed. Without transparency, it's hard to be sure.
Even if that's the true reason for this, this project (and any project that reduces USPS capacity or capabilities) needs to be delayed until after the election to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.
Normally you could assign an innocuous reason for this, but given the other actions the new postmaster has taken, it's pretty clear that (a) this is part of a plan to reduce mail-in voting, and (b) this is part of a plan to force the privatization of mail delivery services.
The new postmaster is major Trump donor/supporter and has a large amount of stock in private mail delivery services. Among other things, he has ordered the removal of most mail-sorting machines and begun requiring that work to be done by hand, while at the same time banning overtime necessary to handle the increased manual work required.
This week, he also ordered the press office to tell the states that there was no way the USPS could timely deliver ballots within the normal absentee voting periods or guarantee delivery before Nov 7...even though in many states the period for mailing in an absentee ballot is longer than 4 weeks. For point of reference, prior to the new postmaster, the USPS was regularly able to handle volumes of mail far in excess of what the predicted mail-in vote will be for 2020.
[EDIT: link: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/u-s-postal-se...]
You haven't offered a reason you believe this is one of those cases, as opposed to it being a symptom of the recent USPS issues. Personally, I have no idea based on the information available.
According to the USPS OIG, it's standard procedure to move or remove boxes that get fewer than 25 pieces of mail per day.
When there was an audit a few years ago, they found that no one ever got around to removing 99% of the collection boxes that should've been removed. On the flip side, in some regions management had removed collection boxes without proving that they met the 25/day standard
Pretty facile analysis. Boxes are being removed from the blue parts of Montana (which definitely do exist, it’s a much more purple state than most people think), and Montana’s senatorial race is close this year. In any case, this is happening largely in blue states, but I knew if I posted a link saying as much it would be immediately flagged on HN, so I posted this one instead.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 56.4 ms ] threadEven that transparency would not be demanded were the postmaster general not actively and deliberately taking a role in make USPS services worse. With the status quo, nobody would care about 13 boxes removed in Missoula, Montana.
So either the USPS needs to be clear about what they're doing and when and why, or they need to improve service so much that people assume the best, rather than the worst.
USPS has a free API that gives you the location of every collection box. I wonder if anyone has been archiving that data over time to compare?
Do you have a link for this? It would be useful for filling out post box information on openstreetmap, I'd think. I found the USPS "Web Tools API"[0] but it seems to focus on pricing, tracking, and address verification. I didn't see anything about querying USPS locations (except for package pickup).
[0] https://www.usps.com/business/web-tools-apis/
However if you inspect your network traffic while doing a search on their "Find locations" page, it's not too hard to find the address of their REST API. However since it's not documented it might be rude to hit it too hard
Even if that's the true reason for this, this project (and any project that reduces USPS capacity or capabilities) needs to be delayed until after the election to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.
The new postmaster is major Trump donor/supporter and has a large amount of stock in private mail delivery services. Among other things, he has ordered the removal of most mail-sorting machines and begun requiring that work to be done by hand, while at the same time banning overtime necessary to handle the increased manual work required.
This week, he also ordered the press office to tell the states that there was no way the USPS could timely deliver ballots within the normal absentee voting periods or guarantee delivery before Nov 7...even though in many states the period for mailing in an absentee ballot is longer than 4 weeks. For point of reference, prior to the new postmaster, the USPS was regularly able to handle volumes of mail far in excess of what the predicted mail-in vote will be for 2020. [EDIT: link: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/u-s-postal-se...]
When there was an audit a few years ago, they found that no one ever got around to removing 99% of the collection boxes that should've been removed. On the flip side, in some regions management had removed collection boxes without proving that they met the 25/day standard
More info here-- https://www.uspsoig.gov/document/collection-box-removal-proc...
If the mailbox removal is part of some sinister plot, it's not the GOP behind it.
https://www.270towin.com/states/Montana