Over 80% of New Zealand's mail is delivered by bike.
Note: I am in New Zealand for a few weeks. And though you can take the bicycle commuter out of Philadelphia, you can't take the Philadelphia out of the bicycle commuter.
So as I've been travelling around, I've been observing how the Kiwis use bicycles and thinking about how we might apply some of their stategies to our streets.
In New Zealand, NZ Post has 2,300 letter carriers or "posties", as they're called locally. Over 80% of posties use bicycles to deliver the mail. It makes great sense. If you think of all the routine services that could be performed by bicycle, mail delivery is truly an obvious choice. It's also one that would work well in Philadelphia and many other cities in the United States.
Bicycle mail delivery has the advantage of being faster than the walking letter carriers that service most residential streets in Philadelphia. It could help ease traffic congestion. (Just consider the impact of frequently stopped mail vans on Center City traffic and you'll see the light.) Better still, a properly equipped bike can transport far more mail than the shoulder bag or even the rolling cart the U.S. Postal Service uses. (Check out the serious panniers on the New Zealand postman's bike they can hold up to 23 kilograms or approximately 51 pounds of letters and packages.) And we haven't even begun on all the usual benefits of transporting anyone or anything by bicycle: It's cost-effective, carbon-neutral and health-promoting.
The city of Philadelphia already has bicycle police officers. Isn't it time the U.S. Postal Service brought us bicycle letter carriers?
Comments
It works here and it could work there. About time the US got on their bikes.
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