Technology Enhancements Prompt Postal Service To Close Pittsburgh Remote Encoding Center

PITTSBURGH —The U.S. Postal Service today announced that the Pittsburgh Remote Encoding Center (REC) will be closed as part the next phase of a nationwide consolidation plan. The facility, located at 700 Braddock Avenue will close in November of this year. In addition, the center located in Selma, CA will also be closing at the same time.

The Remote Encoding Centers were designed as a temporary solution to automate and expedite the processing of handwritten and poorly printed addresses. From the origin of these facilities, the plan has been to downsize the REC operation as technology enhancements enabled more mail to be automated.

In 1997 when the Pittsburgh REC and 54 others were established, postal computerized sorting equipment could only read two percent of addresses on handwritten envelopes. Since that time, with new technology improvements, postal computers are currently able to read and process 93 percent of the mail electronically.

The decision to close facilities was based on a variety of business factors, including operating costs, facility costs, lease expiration dates and the ability of other RECs to absorb the workload. These two closings, and the previous closings since the consolidation process began in 1999, mean that the number of RECs will decline to six.

The remote encoding process involves transmitting electronic images of handwritten mail from mail processing plants to RECs where operators view them on computer screens and key in address information. This information is transmitted back to the postal processing plant where a barcode corresponding to the address is printed on the envelope so that it can be processed on automated equipment.

With ever-increasing improvements in optical character recognition technology, the volume of images sent to RECs has diminished significantly and the Postal Service has gradually consolidated them. As technology evolves, the Postal Service will continue to look for opportunities to reduce operating costs and these opportunities will likely include additional REC consolidations in coming years.

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An independent federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that visits every address in the nation — 146 million homes and businesses. It has 37,000 retail locations and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to pay for operating expenses, not tax dollars. The Postal Service has annual revenues of $75 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail.