The United States Postal Service (USPS) initiated a significant operational change in the Richmond, Virginia, area on October 28, 2023, with the deployment of its Local Transportation Optimization initiative. This program is engineered to streamline Richmond Transportation routes, aiming to decrease the frequency of transportation trips to and from specific Post Offices while maximizing the mail volume per trip. Under this revised system, mail collected from designated delivery units will no longer be transported to the Richmond Regional Processing and Distribution Center (RPDC) on the same day of collection. Instead, this mail will remain at the originating unit until the following day, thereby postponing its entry into the mail sorting process.
Our analysis sought to evaluate the effects of the Postal Service’s new Local Transportation Optimization initiative within the richmond transportation network.
Despite anticipated cost reductions, the full scope of operational, service, and customer impacts stemming from the Local Transportation Optimization initiative remains unclear to both the Postal Service and the public. The implementation of this change coincided with the inauguration of the first RPDC, the handling of Election Mail for local elections, and the peak mailing season’s increased volumes, all within the same geographical area.
While isolating the precise service impact of Local Transportation Optimization is challenging, service performance experienced a notable decline in the weeks following its implementation. Although service metrics showed improvement after the peak mailing season concluded in January, they remained below the performance levels recorded during the corresponding period of the previous year across all mail classes. Furthermore, this richmond transportation adjustment disproportionately affects rural communities and individuals who rely more heavily on mailing letters and packages compared to other Postal Service users.
Management projects annual savings of approximately $7 million for the Richmond region once operations stabilize as a result of this initiative. They have indicated that they are in the preliminary stages of monitoring the savings generated by this initiative and will continue to track these figures as the program expands to additional locations.
To address the identified concerns, we issued a recommendation, which Postal Service management has agreed to implement. Management’s comments and our assessment are detailed at the conclusion of the finding and recommendation. The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (OIG) considers management’s comments to be partially responsive to the recommendation.
