Filler: Time to write off the mail carrier

Monday's story about Glenwood Landing, the Nassau hamlet that has no home mail delivery, likely left readers saying, "Aw, cute." It's like those tales we read of communities transforming their downtowns into North Poles for Christmas, making us think, "That town's so adorable I want to pinch its bottom."

Why must people in Glenwood Landing pick up their mail at the post office? Because the community has fewer than the 750 addresses necessary to make up a route. There are 18 ZIP codes on Long Island -- one other in Nassau County and the rest in Suffolk -- that don't get home delivery.

But the sensible question isn't why tiny-town folk don't get catalogs, pizza coupons and credit-card offers delivered to their homes: It's, why do the rest of us?

The United States Postal Service, theoretically self-supporting, will lose a nontheoretical $6.4 billion this year. There are many reasons for this, the biggest being workers driving around six days a week delivering fewer and fewer quaint pieces of paper to all of us.

The idea for reform currently getting the most attention in Congress is ending Saturday delivery. One can only imagine the brainstorming session leading to that bold idea:

Lackey: "Sir, email, electronic bill-paying and private parcel companies are redefining mail patterns in a way that will destroy every assumption crucial to the postal service's 200-year-old business model."

Congressman: "No problem. Just reduce delivery frequency by one day a week. Oh, and make the uniform shorts shorter. Sell the sizzle, I say."

The vast majority of American homes and businesses shouldn't receive mail delivery at all. Most should pick up their stuff from P.O. boxes, as often as they wish. This would improve things in a number of ways:

It would stop the financial bleeding. The postal service has cut 100,000 employees in the past two years, yet it still has 572,000 -- one of the largest civilian workforces in the world. It can't shrink fast enough to break even without massive changes.

As much as traditional mail volume has been reduced, it ought to decline even more. There's no reason for us to receive most bills by mail, or pay them that way either. The same is true of the offers to handle tax grievances clogging up our boxes and th1/3e mail for our invisible roommate, "Occupant.". It's an expensive and resource-intensive system that's propped up by home mail delivery. Most of us would move all our dealings online if that delivery stopped.

It would vastly reduce carbon emissions by eliminating deliveries and, as I'll show in a second, create a new source of revenue that would actually drive mail prices down.

It probably makes sense to keep delivering mail to huge apartment and commercial buildings, because they're essentially routes in and of themselves. But elsewhere, it's silly.

There are two main arguments against moving most mail delivery to P.O. boxes: Having people go to the post office causes more driving than delivering the mail, and we'd have to build enough post offices to hold millions of new boxes.

Both can be solved with one letter, reading:

"Dear supermarket owners,

"In each community you serve, each of you that submits high enough bids will be allowed to build and maintain 5,000 P.O. boxes in your store. Customers will come to pick up mail, and probably shop there an awful lot, so bid high. Yours truly, the United States Postal Service."

Since we go to the supermarket constantly, no trips will be added, and much driving to deliver mail will be eliminated.

It's hard to change these big institutions with the times, but not impossible. We just have to think outside the mailbox.