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Public Transit and the Postal Service Have the Same Problem

The USPS and U.S. transit agencies face the same impossible demand: Succeed as both a business and a public service. 

A United States Postal Service (USPS) letter carrier wears a protective mask and gloves while delivering mail in Fairfax, Virginia. 

A United States Postal Service (USPS) letter carrier wears a protective mask and gloves while delivering mail in Fairfax, Virginia. 

Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Jarrett Walker

If you want to understand the deepest structural problems facing U.S. transit agencies, look at the U.S. Postal Service.

The new Postmaster General is making sudden changes that are reducing the speed of mail delivery, which is certainly cause for alarm. But the Postal Service has always had a deeper problem. Our expectations of it are contradictory. To put it simply, we expect it to be available to everyone, as though it were a public service, and yet we also expect it to achieve high usage at low cost, as though it were a business. Even more urgently, we expect our leaders to protect us from having to think about how contradictory that is.