USPS Complex | Fort Point

HenryAlan said:
Maybe we should be looking at East Boston, then, for a postal facility. Is there anything going on at Suffolk Downs these days?
Click to expand...

The lack of direct rail connection and the overburdened state of the McClellan Highway likely make Suffolk Downs a less than ideal site for this purpose, though I'm not certain how important rail is to present day postal logistics. There may be opportunities to construct a postal facility on the airport once the rental-cars are consolidated into this facility.
 
HenryAlan said:
I don't support the idea of a cut back, but we should be clear about your assertion regarding suburbs paying for city infrastructure. It's the other way around. Wealth creation in Massachusetts is driven by Boston. The fact that it accumulates in Wellesley doesn't change this fact.
Click to expand...

That is an over simplification

Boston / Cambridge dominate the productive energy/ economic activity inside Rt-128:
Finance
Health Services
Culture -- Tourism / conferences / sports / arts
Legal
Education
Bio/Pharma R&D
other R&D
retail
some manufacturing
longhaul transportation of people / goods

However on / outside RT-128 inide / on I-495 and up 3/93 to NH border is a nearly equally significant collection of economic activity:
high tech R&D and manufacturing
defense R&D and manufacturing
traditional manufacturing
bio/pharma, medical device manufacturing & some R&D
retail
edication
health services
legal
some finance

The key distinction between the two zones of economic activity -- more manufactuing on the outside, more culture/torism, education, ports/airports on the inside

They complement each other which is why the Greater Boston region is a world class economic zone of activity and why things such as the MWRA and T are structured the way that they are
 
This thread needs a few doses of reality.

1. The postal service has been making a profit in recent years despite the downturn once you factor out the weird pre-funding mandate that only the USPS and no other government entity has.

2. The cost of postage has not risen above that of inflation. In 1932, it was 3 cents, or 47 cents in 2010 dollars. In 1975, it was 10 cents a letter, or 40 cents in 2010 dollars. In 1991 it was 29 cents, or 46 cents in 2010 dollars. The current cost of a stamp is 44 cents.

3. Suburban service is not the unprofitable segment. Rural service is. In some remote areas the USPS even has to pay private pilots to fly mail out to individual people or small groups of homes. It is not that Boston is profitable but Wellesley isn't, it's that the Boston metro area is profitable but rural Idaho and Alaska isn't. Some of this is excessive (especially the very, very rural areas) but you need to reach most of these areas in order for the USPS to have network effects. In other words there is an increase in value and revenue from people in cities having universal service and access to lots of far away places that exceeds the loss incurred directly in letters delivered/received.

4. The postal service is very restricted by statute in what it can and can't do. People in management have ideas to diversify, but Congress won't let them.

5. Standard-rate mail ("junk") in fact subsidizes first class mail. Since there is a regular stream of mail arriving at homes as presorted standard mail, first class mail is much cheaper than it would be otherwise. There is nothing wrong with that, and a private business would undoubtedly use the same model. Moreover, if you don't like it, you can just recycle it - or if you are that anal retentive (as I admittedly am on occasion), cross out the address in Sharpie and write return to sender and your letter carrier would be happy to take it back to them no questions asked. The reason businesses send solicitations is to provide people with offers for products and services no different than radio, online, or TV ads.


Despite all this, if the Postal Regulatory Commission even allowed the USPS to raise the price of stamps above inflation and removed the prefunding mandate the USPS would be solvent practically into perpetuity.

Compare today's prices in every industry to those from 50 years ago, adjusted by the consumer price index (overall inflation). Prices in some labor-intensive sectors (e.g. healthcare, education) rose and will continue to rise far faster than inflation while prices in others (manufacturing, air travel, etc) have deflated in real terms.

That's the way the world works - carrier delivery is less subject to productivity improvements than many other industries. If the PRC would just let USPS managers adjust for that, then they would be all set. Rates would be a bit higher, volume might fall a bit, but overall revenue would be higher and the organization would be solvent.

You also have to take into account the fact that online retail is booming and by all accounts will continue to grow. The USPS reported parcel growth in Q3 2011 that equaled or exceeded industry growth rates in nearly all categories. Overall USPS parcel growth rates are averaging over 9% per year.

At my place of work we switched from all FedEx to 100% postal service delivery because the rates are simply much better.

Oh, and to those exhorting the private businesses of UPS and FedEx? UPS's growth has been stagnant, and most (literally, a majority) of FedEx's 6.6% growth has been from revenue from basically handing off parcels to the USPS for delivery.

So when you hear people saying the USPS business model is dead or that problems are all the union's fault, call bullshit. All that's needed is some management flexibility in pricing and some realignment of excess capacity currently used in letters into parcels.
 
^km

Enlightening. Thanks for taking the time.

One question:

Can you provide any sources to support the statement, "Standard-rate mail ("junk") in fact subsidizes first class mail." I've long thought from seemingly reliable sources that the opposite was true.
 
Sicilian said:
^km

Enlightening. Thanks for taking the time.

One question:

Can you provide any sources to support the statement, "Standard-rate mail ("junk") in fact subsidizes first class mail." I've long thought from seemingly reliable sources that the opposite was true.
Click to expand...

Hi Sicilian,

That's a common misconception. Standard mail rates are indeed much lower, but a large chunk of that is because the cost of processing these mailers for the post office is much lower.

For example my company sends many thousands of mailers out during three months of the year, typically in waves, and to several different lists. We print all the mailers and give them to our local post office with different zip code batches in different boxes. We use their trays and covers to put the letters in. The local post office then can skip the sorting process and send the mailers right to the delivery address's local distribution center. We save a good chunk of money doing this, but for big companies there are much more advanced ways of doing it as well that reduce rates even more. Big companies can print the delivery bar code directly on the mail, so the post office's machines don't have to OCR the address and print the bar code.

But overall, here are the important differences:

- Standard mail is processed whenever there is excess capacity or downtime and set aside when things are busy. For example, if we drop off 5000 presorted mailers on December 15th, they will literally put them in a corner and not look at them until after the Christmas rush is over. There is no guaranteed or even estimated delivery time. That lets the PO manage its workflow instead of having it manage them.
- A first class stamp entitles you to a carrier picking up the letter on the corner mailbox or even at your house, standard mail must be dropped off.
- There are more stringent requirements for standard mail's size and dimensions to ensure it is machineable.

Imagine two scenarios:

A 5000-unit business mailing vs. 500 individuals each buying books of 10 stamps and later mailing 10 separate pieces of mail
One check, one point of sale vs. 500 points of sale (and the credit card fees and employee time incurred which eat up revenue on small transactions)
One point of pre-sorted drop off vs 5000 points of pickup (all unsorted)
Little standard of service vs significant standard of service


Letter carrier costs are basically fixed - you basically have to hit every house every day. Having all that standard mail regularly delivered is what pays that guy's salary so you don't have to pay what FedEx would charge you to deliver a letter.

Trust me, when we are doing saturation mailings in a neighborhood, it would be much cheaper, somewhat more reliable, and would allow for more creative/bulkier/more interesting marketing pieces if we could just hire a guy to go door to door and stick a custom marketing piece in everyone's mailbox. That's why major newspapers have their own delivery fleet and paper boys.

But no one but the USPS can touch residential mailboxes or deliver letters and flats - the USPS has the exclusive right to deliver them under federal law.
 
Really interesting. Thanks again for the detailed information.

I suppose I can understand the basis for the federal exclusion mentioned in your last sentence. The gov't probably wanted to ensure that a private carrier (i.e. Fedex) wouldn't compete for profit centers such as dense cities, while leaving USPS holding the bag on rural deliveries.

EDIT: Fixed typo.
 
Ladies and Gentlemen. Cliff Clavin.

Thanks for the input though.
Doesn't change my thought that the USPS needs to update, slim down, and change quicker with the times, and that it will not survive as the entity we know, and this is not a terrible thing.
 
km said:
Hi Sicilian,

That's a common misconception. Standard mail rates are indeed much lower, but a large chunk of that is because the cost of processing these mailers for the post office is much lower.

For example my company sends many thousands of mailers out during three months of the year, typically in waves, and to several different lists. We print all the mailers and give them to our local post office with different zip code batches in different boxes. ....
Trust me, when we are doing saturation mailings in a neighborhood, it would be much cheaper, somewhat more reliable, and would allow for more creative/bulkier/more interesting marketing pieces if we could just hire a guy to go door to door and stick a custom marketing piece in everyone's mailbox. That's why major newspapers have their own delivery fleet and paper boys.

But no one but the USPS can touch residential mailboxes or deliver letters and flats - the USPS has the exclusive right to deliver them under federal law.
Click to expand...


BUT the real question is why print a bunch of stuff here -- and then ship the printed paper to all these people who don't want any of it

Why not print on demand locally -- if someone likes what you are purveying (say even based on a bulk shipped sample such as ValuePak) -- they can have it printed in Brockton or wherever and then delivered locally

Obviously the ideal would be to skip the process of shipping bulk even the stuff printed-on-demand and just ship pdf files to the consumer for their own printing if desired or downloading to a Kindle, etc.

I'm willing to bet that in the next decade that the current blitz of paper hitting the average home will slow to a trickle

This will profoundly change the nature of what is send by USPS as well as the express services to parcels and some few letter-like documents:
original photos.
passports,
scraps of your loved-ones-hairs,
love-notes scented in perfume or pheremones,
some contracts with notary stamps,
certificates printed on high quality specialty papers,
dwindling number of Netflicks return DVDs

and not much else.

To service the great but dwinding hoi polloi without Internet and computers -- the local betting parlors, smoke shops, etc. (perhaps even a local postal station) can offer local printer / scanner services for those who absolutely need regular letters, flyers and catalogs printed on paper.
 
whighlander said:
BUT the real question is why print a bunch of stuff here -- and then ship the printed paper to all these people who don't want any of it

Why not print on demand locally -- if someone likes what you are purveying (say even based on a bulk shipped sample such as ValuePak) -- they can have it printed in Brockton or wherever and then delivered locally

Obviously the ideal would be to skip the process of shipping bulk even the stuff printed-on-demand and just ship pdf files to the consumer for their own printing if desired or downloading to a Kindle, etc.

I'm willing to bet that in the next decade that the current blitz of paper hitting the average home will slow to a trickle

This will profoundly change the nature of what is send by USPS as well as the express services to parcels and some few letter-like documents:
original photos.
passports,
scraps of your loved-ones-hairs,
love-notes scented in perfume or pheremones,
some contracts with notary stamps,
certificates printed on high quality specialty papers,
dwindling number of Netflicks return DVDs

and not much else.

To service the great but dwinding hoi polloi without Internet and computers -- the local betting parlors, smoke shops, etc. (perhaps even a local postal station) can offer local printer / scanner services for those who absolutely need regular letters, flyers and catalogs printed on paper.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if it's "well played" or "you've made your point." Can we move on, now though?
 
Re: Fort Point craziness!

JS38 said:
Well, nice to see the designers over at CBT were at least thinking big - interesting to dream at least! :)

http://www.cbtarchitects.com/urban-design/master-plans/private-sector/index.php?id=265
Click to expand...

That looks cool even with the towers pretty much a dead issue. The Channel public access looks amazing (and the placement of that water park at the midpoint on Dot Ave. goes a long way to bridging the Broadway-South Station gap), as does the streetscaping. Look like there's some storefronts there on Dot Ave., which is the critical part for getting the foot traffic. As long as they still do a 2-4 story job sans the towers, that'll be a huge missing commercial link.
 
^FLine

You probably are aware that these CBT (and many other) renderings are all fictional placeholders to demonstrate possibilities when USPS sells the parcel.

I'm not sure why you say the "towers pretty much a dead issue."

This is a great location for towers because of the sunlight falling toward the water's edge. As I remember, few folks involved in the planning of these parcels objected to towers on these parcels. Proximity to South Station was a significant factor in support of lots of density and uses on this site.

I should clarify that there has not been an official planning process for these parcels, just informal presentations by USPS over the past decade.
 
Why are the towers dead? And I agree, it looks really good. I'm picturing stepping off a train at South Station and walking over to the channel side promenade as a major wow, welcome to Boston sort of moment.
 
I presume that this is the Commonwealth's call as the Right of First Refusal must lie with the Department of Transportation and the T

After the DOT needs are satisfied (Amtrak & Commuter Rail) I'm sure that the BRA will sketch from the purely Boston side of things what the City of Boston is looking for particularly with respect to the Fort Point Channel and the water's edge -- the BRA has done extensive plans on this quite recently

The USPS site combined with the South Bay Interchnge area -- combined can be looked upon as another Pru Center where a whole lot of rail road track on the edge of the Back Bay was transformed into today's boomtown on Boylston
 
South Station should be reconstituted to its original size and number tracks prior to any channel or air-rights development taking place. This city is constantly crippling its rail infrastructure in the name of development.

Ultimately if this continues Boston will be unable to support any additional development due to a lack of viable transportation infrastructure. The commuter rail hubs need their tracks back to keep the highways from being overwhelmed and we desperately need to revisit locations for rail yards.

The lack of rail access to the airport and seaport is appalling. How many thousands of truck trips could be eliminated off the highways each week by a single freight train? The same with passenger car trips versus having the commuter rail to the north and into New Hampshire operating at the same quality as the south side operations.
 
This ^^^ was my thought upon looking at the pretty picture.
Not the full above well thought out post of course.
Just "hey that looks nice and exciting, but where's the room for the 7 additional tracks at SS?"
 
Lurker said:
South Station should be reconstituted to its original size and number tracks prior to any channel or air-rights development taking place. This city is constantly crippling its rail infrastructure in the name of development......
Click to expand...

Lurk --- when South Station was in its heighday it supported more than 1000 train arrival and departures per day. When it opened in 1899, it was the world's largest train station. At one point (1913) more than 38 million people alighting or leaving from trains on its 28 tracks, passed through South Station in one year -- making it the worlds busiest --that's 125% of the peak at Logan

that was a different era -- today people travel by airplane (non-stop to Tokyo next spring by JAL 787), train, bus, car as they prefer and no amount of wishing for the return to the days of steam trains will ever turn the clock back (even that expression is well anachronistic)

I will confidently state that the heyday of South Station -- will never be repeated in the lifetime of any member of the forum.

However it was great and can be once again in the proper context such as making another Pru-scale development under/ on /above and next to the historic station building

excerpt from SS history:
http://www.south-station.net/Station-History/Throughtheyears

Inside the station, large, arched windows looked out onto Summer Street. The main waiting room, 225 by 65 feet, featured marble mosaic floors, polished granite and enameled brick and plaster walls. Coffered ceilings and its walls shone brightly from 1,200 incandescent lights.

Concessionaires of the times offered up flowers, confections, daily papers, fruit, tobacco and more. The lunchroom had 200 stools and counters made from Tennessee marble and mahogany, while three large dining rooms, a kitchen and additional serving rooms offered accommodations for private parties or receptions. A 34-by-44-foot women’s waiting room featured rocking chairs, lounges, tables and chairs, cribs and cradles. Another surprising feature for the time were 45 bathrooms with automatically flushing toilets.

excerpts from Boston Herald on ahe dedication:

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mayor Quincy to the crowd, “we meet here today at the formal opening and dedication of a great building unique in many respects, not only by far the largest structure in this city but one of the greatest in the area which it covers ever erected by the hand of man anywhere in the world.

"This great terminal station laid out upon such a comprehensive scale so liberal in its accommodations and so complete in all its equipment will here after rank as one of the great buildings of this city – a source of pride to its citizens, as object of admiration to strangers.

“In place of the old city gate through which the stranger could pass only by permission, we open today in Boston this wide and spacious gateway of unrestricted freedom of the City of Boston.”

....By the time the inaugural day of service had ended, 62 trains had departed the new station. In its first week of operations, the station welcomed 250 daily trains and by the fall of 1899, South Station was handling almost 740 trains each day.

....While it was already the largest, South Station quickly became the busiest train station in the world, handling about 38 million passengers in 1913, ranking higher than its second nearest competitor, Boston’s North Station, which handled 29 million and New York’s Grand Central Station, which handled 22 million that same year.

....Within 30 years of its opening, South Station’s metal train shed and the two-story metal-covered midway were demolished due to deterioration. Around that same time, interior alterations were made to passenger waiting rooms and service areas.

.....During World War II, trains were filled with soldiers traveling for military purposes. In 1945, swollen by GIs returning from war, South Station again made history when over 135,000 visitors poured into its halls each day.
 
SeamusMcFly said:
This ^^^ was my thought upon looking at the pretty picture.
Not the full above well thought out post of course.
Just "hey that looks nice and exciting, but where's the room for the 7 additional tracks at SS?"
Click to expand...

Whereas I just assumed it was incorporated into the plan -- that some of what we saw was on air rights. But you and Lurker are right, we can't assume that.
 
That a really cool rendering but the vent building needs to be disguised somehow...
 
A pie-in-the-sky concept for this might be sinking all of the tracks so that air rights would be at street level (as it is at the Pru). Then you could conceivably expand the station all the way to the channel while keeping the original station building as a central ticketing and waiting area (unlike the renderings we've seen of the T's plan, which appears to include a new stationhouse).

Lower level tracks could also make SS into a through station if they connected to the N-S rail link. Stations in NY and Chicago already operate this way. It would be unthinkably expensive to execute, though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top