First the disclaimer; I am not a scientist, however all the numbers used are pulled from practical experience . What is overwhelmingly apparent is, the loss the Deer Harbor Post Office will significantly affect the amount of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, resulting from longer and more trips to the Post Office in Eastsound or possibly Orcas Landing .
With the help of Map Quest, I determined that:
- The mail truck goes 12 miles out of its way to bring the mail to Deer Harbor. It does this twice a day, six days a week, totaling 144 miles a week. Assuming 7 mpg, that works out to an extra 20.5 gallons per week to deliver the mail to Deer Harbor.
- There are 318 mail boxes at the Deer Harbor post office so let's pick a number of 200, assuming some patrons are part-time residents and some people have 2 boxes for business reasons If each family makes one round trip to East Sound (22 miles, 6 times a week to pick-up mail & mail packages) it becomes 132 miles by 200 residents which comes to 26,400 miles. If the average car gets 18 mpg for 26,400 miles, fuel used would be 1,466.6 gallons of gas per week.
- Of the 200 residents who presently use the post office, twenty live close enough to walk. Assuming the average round trip to the D.H. Post Office is 3 mi. for 180 residents, that's 540 miles six times a week for a total of 3,240 miles. At 18 mpg, that's 180 gallons of gas per week.
- So the present use is about 180 gallons by postal patrons, and 20.5 by the mail truck, for a total of about 200.5 gallons per week. Whereas 200 people driving to Eastsound six times a week would use 1,466.6 gallons. The difference is 1,266.1 gallons a week of potential fuel usage, if we lose the Deer Harbor Post Office. This translates to 65,832 gallons a year that would release about 1,316,640 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air.
Granted some people will car pool, and some will go to town only a couple times a week. However, it should be clear that a much larger amount of fuel would be used in addition to the amount of pollution released. We need to solve our problems without creating bigger ones. Help keep our Post Office viable, pay rent on a post office box, and choose to ship by mail whenever possible.
Thanks for giving this your consideration.
Posts
Interesting study, and on target. Title 39 of the US Code (Postal Service) in one of the many subparts states that postal service shall be "efficient". Driving to Eastsound for mail "service" is, in addition to Eastsound P. O. not having room for the 318 boxes and additional service needs, clearly not efficient. And the parking would be a horror show. Added in the costs to further pollute the atmosphere as so well stated here, consider this: if you buy your gas in Anacortes at the Tribal station before getting on the ferry, you are paying around $2 today. Those additional gallons to drive to Eastsound at $2 per come to an outlay of $131,674 residents would be required to spend to obtain the "service. If gas goes to where it was not too long ago, when everyone was gnashing their teeth, in anguish about the costly drive to go to the store, to $3 per, we will be required to spend $197,493 to further pollute the air. If, and it could happen, gas goes wild again, and shoots to, say, $4, residents of Deer Harbor would collectively spend $263,328 for the priveledge of the daily mail. This is "efficient"? How would it be at the rates Europeans pay for gas, in the $7-11 per gallon range?
ReplyDeleteFor your thinking.
Michael Coughlin
If we lose the Post Office, we will still get mail. It is not clear how it will come. We may have a rural route with individual boxes or we may have grouped boxes on posts near Deer Harbor road. We will still have to make trips to Orcas Landing or East Sound to mail packages. The above calculations should point out whatever solution we have will use more fuel . Even if we make 1/10th of the trips used in the calculation, it is still a large increase in consumption and pollution.
ReplyDeleteYou might be interested in this education by the USPS for business customers, touting energy savings for small business owners. It was posted in the Chamber of Commerce Blast email.
ReplyDeleteIt's a bit of a contradiction with their current direction.
Blast entry listed below
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ATTEND A FREE "SMARTER SHIPPING" WORKSHOP!
(Tuesday, April 7 @ 2 pm) Day correction, not Saturday as stated in yesterdays Blast.
Large, small and home base business owners: Save time and money! The US Postal Services wants to help you get your products in the hands of your customers sooner, cheaper and more securely. During these trying economic times the one sales venue that is up is mail-order business. Make plans to attend this free class on all the things the US Postal Services has to offer our small and home-based business customers! Save time, money and reduce your carbon footprint! Location: Eastsound Fire Station Conference Room.
INFORMATION: Contact Todd Fox @ 206-276-0675.