U.S. Postal Service is charging more for poorer service; you can look up the predicted effect in your postal area

Washington Post chart; for a larger version, click on it.

This week, the U.S. Postal Service starts operating on new delivery standards this week, and it's not good news. On top of recent postage-rate increases, USPS is giving itself more time to deliver the mail.

Just how much more time, where you're concerned? You can find out on an interactive site created by The Washington Post. The contractions and shifts in speedy-delivery areas can be fascinating; this comparison for Pike County, Kentucky, shows that the USPS is making it part of West Virginia, in postal terms. The changes appear to have a disproportionate effect on many rural areas.

Washington Post maps, based on software by Mapbox; for a larger version of the image, click on it.

"Seventy percent of first-class mail sent to Nevada will take longer to arrive, according to The Post’s analysis, as will 60 percent of the deliveries to Florida, 58 percent to Washington state, 57 percent to Montana, and 55 percent to Arizona and Oregon," The Post's Jacob Bogage reports. "In all, at least a third of such letters and parcels addressed to 27 states will arrive more slowly under the new standards.

Bogage notes that the changes are "core components of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s 10-year plan for the agency, a program designed to cut costs and raise new revenue to fix its many financial problems."