[jcampbell1]

The post office already can and does get this efficiency with community mailboxes. My grandmother and I both use a key to get our mail from a large mail drop. She lives in an newly constructed old person neighborhood in rural Florida, and I live in a Manhattan apartment building. My parents get their mail delivered by car to a personal mailbox. I agree with your suggestion, but how do we get existing neighborhoods to build a mail drop? Who pays for it? Who maintains the keyed mailboxes? My parents would be completely okay with having a mail drop and picking their mail up at the entrance to the neighborhood, but I don't think they are interested paying to build it.

I think we should combine some of the ideas:

If your neighborhood has community mailboxes, then you get mail every day. If you have personal mailboxes, then you get mail 3 days per week. If you want mail everyday, then organize your neighborhood to have a community mailbox.

[stretchwithme]

The cost to build it would be recovered in the first few months if people were actually charged for the cost of having a person walk around for a half hour 6 days a week. That's got to cost $200 a month for a small community. Of course, government specializes in hiding the true costs of things, so who knows.

[IgorPartola]

I like your compromise. It still gives everyone access to door to door delivered mail but also cuts costs significantly. And the best part is that people who live in larger communities get the opportunity to get their mail delivered every day if they so choose.