Juicing up Mail Deliveries
Postal Regulatory Commission member Ruth Y. Goldway had a good idea on Feb. 10 when she suggested in a New York Times opinion piece that the a portion of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan go toward helping the U.S. Postal Service convert its 219,000 vehicles–the country’s largest civilian fleet– from gasoline to electric power .
This would give a big push to his plan to put 1 million electric hybrid cars on the road by 2015, she argued.
Just retrofitting the USPS’s 142,000 standard delivery trucks alone would reduce gasoline consumption by up to 68 million gallons a year and save the USPS millions of dollars.
But this idea seems too logical and sane.
Certainly too much so to withstand inevitable lobbying and pressure from the likes of the automobile and oil industries and their allies in Congress who prefer the status quo and nothing that could threaten them.
They might possibly argue that the federal government can’t give the USPS any money because ever since 1970, the postal service was supposed to operate without any taxpayer support.
But at a time when the USPS is in excruciating short- and long-term financial difficulty, Goldway’s ideas are worth taking seriously.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Hey Ruth—do you know what a “doddpotter” is?