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New Study Proposes Hybrid Public-Private Postal Service
By Lisa Barron
Newsmax.com
Monday, 03 Jun 2013
A new study by a nonpartisan Washington think tank recommends a radical new solution to the problems faced by the United States Postal Service in the form of a public-private partnership.
In the report released Monday, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation argues that all but "final mile" mail delivery should be opened up to private competition and the size of the postal service should be drastically reduced to meet the realities of the digital age.
"Like many other industries whose business models made sense in an analog, paper-based era, USPS’s business model makes much less sense in today’s digital era and as such is in need of fundamental reform," foundation President Robert Atkinson wrote in the study report.
With a decline in the volume of mail, combined with the recession, the postal service has lost almost $30 billion dollars in the last three fiscal years and is on track to lose billions again in 2013, Atkinson notes.
The foundation's proposal centers on allowing private companies competing to transport and process much of the country's first-class mail. The postal service would maintain the mail carrier "letterbox monopoly" on existing delivery routes, and it would determine a national average for delivery costs that it would charge private carriers.
Atkinson acknowledges the plan would mean that 40 percent of the more than 500,000 postal workforce would lose their jobs and possibly half of the more than 30,000 post offices would close.
"These proposals laid out here will change the postal system to such an extent that it may no longer be recognizable. Competition may well force USPS out of every part of the postal system aside from the final-mile monopoly," he writes, adding, "If that happens, so be it."
Atkinson acknowledges that fixing the system "will require tremendous political will on the part of all the players," but he concludes: "The important goal is improving overall efficiency and quality in the postal system (public and private) and improving service for customers, not to preserve USPS as we know it."
"Opening USPS to private competition outside last-mile delivery is necessary to make the postal system better, and is therefore a step that should be taken," he wrote.