Superboxes are significant structures that have to be built and maintained to withstand literally unending vandalism and attempts at theft. They are urban blight, and most quickly become an eyesore that are, by federally forced mandate, pushed onto a community and then maintained at Canada Post's leisure and low level of standards. If any other business wanted to build such ominous structures throughout a neighborhood the barriers and costs would be enormous, and you talk about home delivery being subsidized? [In that self-destructive, race-to-the-bottom, worst-outcome-for-all way that is so disheartening].
Give me a break.
Where a mail carrier once walked briskly through a neighborhood (doubling as a set of eyes and ears in the community, for what that's worth), now they park their truck and sit at the superbox for half an hour while they sort mail into boxes.
I cannot, for the life of me, comprehend how it has made anything more efficient. And of course the grossly inefficient Canada Post of today, with sky-high postal rates and terrible service standards, already is horribly inefficient, so shouldn't the superbox thing have been proven by now?
And it's curious that you note their security given that most have keys that endure for years (from owner to owner to owner), and they are -- right now -- very common target for thieves: Why bother suspiciously going door to door (where the residents would be more likely to quickly retrieve their mail anyways, instead of some common box down the street) when you can pry open a superbox and steal the mail of dozens of people at once.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/locked-canada-post-...
Canada Post has always been a derelict, massively dysfunctional corporation. Their parcel delivery service is only profitable because they don't deliver parcels: They give you a delivery notice and force you to drive to a depot n miles away in the most grotesquely inefficient delivery scheme devised by man.