U.S. Pulls Back on Closing Rural Post Offices
The U.S. Postal Service said it is abandoning for now its plan to close thousands of post offices in rural locations and will instead keep them operating with shorter opening hours.
The cash-strapped agency faced significant backlash from Congress and communities last summer when it began considering about 3,600 post offices for closure this year.
Instead, now 13,000 post offices with low traffic will shorten their operations to between two and six hours a day.
“We’ve listened to our customers in rural America and we’ve heard them loud and clear - they want to keep their post offices open,” said Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe. “There’s no plan for closings at this point.”