It's about to get harder to mail a letter.
Many of the familiar blue mailboxes in Central Maryland will be casualties of a U.S. Postal Service effort to become more efficient. More than 800 of the boxes have been removed in the past decade from Cumberland to the Eastern Shore, and now 350 more will be uprooted.
As the post office struggles financially, it won't pass up savings in its gasoline expenses that come with emptying fewer mailboxes. But the real force behind the need to decommission some boxes is the declining volume of mail dropped into them, as more people stay in touch and pay bills electronically.
"Instead of using collection boxes, most people today send their mail from home or workplace and pay bills online and correspond via Internet," said USPS spokeswoman Freda Sauter.
But some still prefer to use the big steel mailboxes.
Robert C. Ohlverter has lived in Federal Hill for more than 60 years and has grown accustomed to walking down to Fort Avenue to drop letters and bills into a mailbox now tagged for removal.
Ohlverter said older residents like him who are less tech-savvy still rely on the blue boxes.
"They're hurting a lot of senior citizens right now," he said. "If you take a look, there's not that many boxes around. If they keep this up, you might as well go down to the post office."
Beyond mailboxes and convenience, what's at stake are age-old methods people have used to stay connected, said Karen Wisdom, an instructional science and technology lecturer at California State University-Monterey Bay.
"While digitally mediated communication is beneficial for everyday work and personal needs, traditional communication must be preserved," Wisdom said.
"Who doesn't appreciate a handwritten letter from friends or family?"
Over the past decade, the volume of first-class mail, which includes bills and letters, has steadily declined, and the postal service expects that trend to continue, Sauter said.
Since 2003, the amount of bills paid by mail has dropped 12 percent, mostly because of the rise of online banking, Sauter said, citing a postal service study. Through the first three quarters of this fiscal year, mail volume has dropped to 48.5 billion pieces, down about 5.5 percent from the same period last year, according to the postal service.
As volume declines, losses mount, with the postal service seeing a net loss of $1.13 billion so far this year.
