8 ms·
As the article notes, two-thirds of Canadians already do not have home mail delivery. Many urban residents, like myself, who live in newer areas with community
by eigenvector 13y ago
As the article notes, two-thirds of Canadians already do not have home mail delivery. Many urban residents, like myself, who live in newer areas with community mail boxes (a mail box that is maybe 100 metres from your home with everyone's mail) or in any type of apartment or condo building do not have mail delivered to our doorsteps.
It's secure (the boxes are locked unlike a doorstep mailbox), convenient (parcels can be locked in a special parcel dropbox, the key for which is deposited in your own mailbox, instead of having to be retrieved at the post office) and cheaper for the postal system.
Only people who live in older, more affluent areas built before community mailboxes receive home mail delivery. It's effectively a subsidy from us to them. Good riddance.
- msrpotus 13y agoDoes each person have their own mailbox, just all together (which is what most US apartment buildings have) or is it just a big open box with everyone's mail?
- randlet 13y agoThe former.
- a-priori 13y agoEveryone gets their own mailbox with a separate key, they're just all together in one place. They look like this: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_AMDCvMaCBE4/TPNLlfBWovI/AAAAAAAAAfA/uarcWXVzv40/s1600/IMG_7794.JPG http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_AMDCvMaCBE4/TPNLlfBWovI/AAAAAAAAAf...
- slantyyz 13y agoOf note for non-Canadians - those big compartments at the bottom are "shared". If you get a package that can fit in one that doesn't require a signature, the mail carrier will drop the package in there and put its key in your mail compartment. After you pick up your package, you drop the key off in the outbound mail slot at the top of the box. It's very convenient.
- code_duck 13y agoThey do the same thing in the US at apartment buildings, subdivisions, even some streets with single family houses.
- cylinder 13y agoNot just a Canadian thing. I grew up with one of these in a typical sprawling Texas suburban development built in the 1980s. Now my parents live in much older suburb and have home delivery.
- johnchristopher 13y agoWhat happens if you don't return that key ? Can you easily make a replica to get the package of the next deliveries ?
- beachstartup 13y ago> or in any type of apartment or condo building do not have mail delivered to our doorsteps wait... in that case, i don't think i've ever had urban home mail delivery. who gets door delivered door to door in a city? large brownstone-type SFRs?
- randlet 13y agoI'm in a downtown Ottawa "condo" (row house really) and all the homes around here have door to door delivery. It's pretty common I think.
- eigenvector 13y agoYep, basically any neighbourhood of detached homes built pre-1970s which is when community mailboxes became the new standard.
- slantyyz 13y agoNot sure that's true, I think it has to more do with whether you live inside a major city. My last house in Toronto was built in late 2001, and even though it was in the less dense northeast outskirts of the city, I had delivery to the door. At that same time, all suburban neighborhoods a few intersections north of me were getting community mailboxes for quite some time.
- seszett 13y agoI'm not sure what is a "large brownstone-type SFR", but in Montreal I had a mailbox next to my door even on second floor, like you can see here for example: http://goo.gl/maps/CfdjY http://goo.gl/maps/CfdjY I also had another apartment in a building with all (just four) apartment mailboxes in the entry hall (like is common in France) about in the same area.
- grecy 13y agoI live in Whitehorse, Yukon, and every house within city limits gets door-to-door delivery now, including packages. Those outside town have the shared boxes you describe.
- eigenvector 13y agoWell then I have just exhibited the typical Toronto tendency to assume the rest of Canada is like here. :)
- theorique 13y agoThis "rest of Canada" that you refer to, what is that? Isn't Toronto basically Canada? ;)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- grecy 13y agoCommonly called 'Onterrible' around here by the hordes that left.
- timdiggerm 13y agoExcept for Quebec, right?
- pyre 13y agoI live in Toronto, get door-to-door delivery, and am most definitely not in an affluent area, so I wouldn't even say that you assumptions hold true to Toronto.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoSir or madam, I'm impressed. I came upon reading about Whitehorse a few days ago when I contemplated a drive to Alaska from Illinois. Whitehorse is definitely off the beaten path
- 13y ago
- guyzero 13y agoNot every older are is more affluent. Houses in Parkdale get direct-to-door delivery.
- eigenvector 13y agoTrue. In Toronto at least, old city single-family homes do tend to correspond to affluence though (with exceptions like Parkdale).
- Pxtl 13y agoI'll one-up Parkdale - I live in the Hammer. Come visit Beasley, I will show you the most beautiful century-home crack-dens you've ever seen.
- slantyyz 13y ago>> Only people who live in older, more affluent areas built before community mailboxes receive home mail delivery. I lived in the 'hood' - Malvern - in a house that was built in 2001 and I got door-to-door delivery even though houses built at the same time in Markham (just north of Toronto) were on community mailboxes.
- danielweber 13y agoLooking at the (American) houses of me and my siblings, there is an inverse relationship between price and convenience of home delivery. One of us lives in a 100K house and gets mail put right to their front door. Another lives in a 800K house and has to drive to their mailbox. How much of a say does the local Post Office have in how much service it will provide new developments?
- semiquaver 13y agoIn general the USPS pushes for rules that mandate the use of community boxes for new developments, for example: http://www.cnweekly.com/articles/2013/07/30/news/doc51f7da7c4961c546217734.txt http://www.cnweekly.com/articles/2013/07/30/news/doc51f7da7c... Where I live, the primary determinant of whether you get home delivery is the age of your community.
- tsotha 13y agoI bought and older house, and the USPS puts my mail right through a slot in the door. It's great - super convenient and I don't have to worry about stopping delivery when I'm out of town. Personally, I'd rather see delivery cut on Saturday than have a community mailbox.
- afreak 13y ago> Only people who live in older, more affluent areas built before community mailboxes receive home mail delivery. It's effectively a subsidy from us to them. Good riddance. My parents' old house in a suburb of Vancouver is not in an affluent area and received such door to door service. Their new neighbourhood (which is rather upper middle income) and the apartment block that I live in doesn't however have this and has the "new-fangled" community mailboxes. I personally am not a fan of this but the amount of mail I have received has diminished to just bills.
- danudey 13y agoAgreed. I grew up in Saskatchewan, and a lot of people live in houses even if they rent, all of whom have home delivery. It's the norm in any area where houses were also the norm, but where acre lots weren't.
- corresation 13y agoWe don't know the economics of super boxes versus home delivery, and it would be perilously naive to assume that a move to it demonstrates that it is fiscally prudent. Money goes from one person's pocket to another person's pocket. Superboxes are significant structures that have to be built and maintained to withstand literally unending vandalism and attempts at theft. They are urban blight, and most quickly become an eyesore that are, by federally forced mandate, pushed onto a community and then maintained at Canada Post's leisure and low level of standards. If any other business wanted to build such ominous structures throughout a neighborhood the barriers and costs would be enormous, and you talk about home delivery being subsidized? [In that self-destructive, race-to-the-bottom, worst-outcome-for-all way that is so disheartening]. Give me a break. Where a mail carrier once walked briskly through a neighborhood (doubling as a set of eyes and ears in the community, for what that's worth), now they park their truck and sit at the superbox for half an hour while they sort mail into boxes. I cannot, for the life of me, comprehend how it has made anything more efficient. And of course the grossly inefficient Canada Post of today, with sky-high postal rates and terrible service standards, already is horribly inefficient, so shouldn't the superbox thing have been proven by now? And it's curious that you note their security given that most have keys that endure for years (from owner to owner to owner), and they are -- right now -- very common target for thieves: Why bother suspiciously going door to door (where the residents would be more likely to quickly retrieve their mail anyways, instead of some common box down the street) when you can pry open a superbox and steal the mail of dozens of people at once. http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/locked-canada-post-community-mailboxes-aren-t-secure-193119352.html http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/locked-canada-post-... Canada Post has always been a derelict, massively dysfunctional corporation. Their parcel delivery service is only profitable because they don't deliver parcels: They give you a delivery notice and force you to drive to a depot n miles away in the most grotesquely inefficient delivery scheme devised by man.
- eigenvector 13y agoThe cost of community mail delivery is not unknown. CMBs have existed for decades and the article states that the cost of home delivery is 130% more. So I would submit that we do actually know the economics of it. The cost differential is about $762 million/year ($269-$117 * 5MM mailboxes). I actually worked part-time as a mail carrier doing home delivery once. It's not easy work, especially in the winter. A lot of people don't maintain their driveways and walkways in the winter and it can be hazardous especially when you're carrying 15 kg or more of mail. CMBs aren't high-security. But they're surely more secure than unlocked home mailboxes, especially in sleepy suburban neighbourhoods where no one is home for most of the day. I don't disagree that Canada Post could likely save money in other ways. But this seems to be a rational place to start.
- dobbsbob 13y agoThese boxes will be robbed on a daily basis in places like Burnaby, Surrey and Vancouver where ID theft is rife on community mail boxes
- troymc 13y agoI live in Burnaby, where we have a community mailbox. It's never been robbed, as far as I know. It's encased inside a secondary metal container so we need two keys to get to our mail. Meanwhile, home mailboxes (near the front door) are almost never locked. If you want to do identity theft, garbage cans are where to look. They're almost never locked.
- dobbsbob 13y agoThe metal cage is there because probably the boxes were robbed constantly ;) The pics I've seen of these new boxes don't have a cage but I imagine will when tons of theft happens.
- Pxtl 13y agoTo provide a counter-argument: those "older" areas are also denser, and not necessarily affluent. Come to Hamilton. I'll show you neighborhoods full of worn-down century homes that are under 6 figures to buy. And they don't have driveways. The next mailbox is only 20 feet away, and there's barely even a front lawn. Compared to the gargantuan two-car-garage megalots of modern suburban sprawl, that's a huge difference. The amount of time a mail-carrier spends walking from one home to the next is important since that activity consumes most of the delivery time. So the fact is, we used to build cities that made sense to service with mail-carriers. Then we took the brakes off of sprawl development and now it's no longer economical to do this. I want to see a cost breakdown - what communities cost the most per-house to service with mail-carriers, and what communities cost the least. You want a fiscally sound decision? Fine, base it on cost.
- tacticus 13y agowhy aren't mail carriers in suburban areas given bikes or motorbikes to speed up their travel? Auspost has a full spectrum of delivery vehicles vans and cars for remote area\parcels, postie bikes (honda ct110 (though apparently they are replacing these)) for suburban areas, bicycles for denser and trolleys and walking for dense areas
- graeme 13y agoYes, I'd love to know the cost of delivery in my neighborhood. I live in the Plateau Mont-Royal in Montreal. There are about 200 people on my block, based on what I could gauge from my municipal election zone. I see the postal workers quickly moving from home to home on foot. I also fear the community mailboxes will be significantly uglier in areas such as mine, which have a combination of lovely architecture and small streets.
- ams6110 13y agoI don't know how widespread it is in the US, but locally all the new developments have those community mailboxes, typically near the main entrance or perhaps several spaced around the neighborhood. I had assumed they are now mandatory as even in wealthy neighborhoods they are used.
- pyre 13y ago> Only people who live in older, more affluent areas built before community mailboxes receive home mail delivery. I'll debate that 'more affluent' part.