USPS's proposed rural post-office hours highlighted in new interactive map

The U.S. Postal Service announced its new plan for rural post offices last week that will affect almost 13,000 offices nationwide. The agency will host community meetings in rural areas in the coming months to discuss with residents options for their offices: replace it with a "village post office," or postal counter inside a private business, close the office and rely on rural delivery, or keep the office open with reduced hours -- to six, four or two.

Steve Hutkins of Save the Post Office provides a link to an interactive Google map and table that can be accessed here. The map shows the proposed reduced hours of operation at all the rural offices in question.  Hutkins also provides instructions about the various way to use the map.


Screenshot of Google map

The USPS announced yesterday it would start consolidating 48 mail processing centers in July. It would consolidate an additional 92 in February, and another 89 early in 2014, reports Ron Nixon of The New York Times. The agency expects to save $2.1 billion when the consolidations are complete in 2014. In all, about 28,000 positions will be eliminated because of the consolidations.