Box spacing

[Olive]

Today PM came in and told everyone we had boxes on our routes that were “ Potential clusters” Has anyone else seen this list. PM does our yearly ride along and has never said anything in 10 years. Now boxes that are 5 to 10 feet apart are considered clusters. This doesn’t seem right.

 

[neciat]

Today PM came in and told everyone we had boxes on our routes that were “ Potential clusters” Has anyone else seen this list. PM does our yearly ride along and has never said anything in 10 years. Now boxes that are 5 to 10 feet apart are considered clusters. This doesn’t seem right.

The RRECS Guide has this regarding creep time.

3. Creep Time (S143)

This standard is applied to those instances in which the distance between two mailboxes
is less than 5 feet. The mapping program cannot accurately discern distances this small,
so RRECS applies a standard of 0.0208 minutes for each of the spaces between boxes
grouped close together. In a common example of 10 boxes lined up on one long post,
the route valuation would be credited with 9 spaces times 0.0208 minutes/space times
6 days or 1.12 minutes per week in Creep Time for this set of boxes.

So, your PM is right about the 5 or maybe even 6 feet. I'm not so sure about any distance(s) beyond that. It sounds like they are trying to lower the number of mapped stops. That would be a benchmarking grievance if this is what they are doing.