Postmen on their motorcycles at the Patna GPO. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Snail mail just got a tad faster.

The Bihar circle of India Post has taken an initiative to ensure collection and delivery of mails on time. The authorities have done away with rickety bicycles and brought in vehicles enabled with Global Positioning System (GPS) and motorbikes.

Yes, now you are more likely to find postmen coming on motorbikes to deliver your mails. The service has been in place for the past fortnight.

General Post Office (GPO) director (business development, technology and marketing) Anil Kumar told The Telegraph on Tuesday: “We have recently provided motorcycles, three- and four-wheelers to the postmen for expediting the system of mail collection and delivery and mechanise the system of mail delivery.”

Nine motorcycles, two GPS-enabled vans and two three-wheelers have been provided to postmen moving in the areas falling under the jurisdiction of Patna GPO to facilitate swift collection and delivery of mails.

Anil said: “We have nine postmen moving on motorbikes to collect mails from letterboxes and also deliver the same to residents. Two GPS-enabled vans are being used only for delivering mails to various clients. The GPS allows us to keep a tab on the van movement in the city through a control room located at the Patna GPO. While one three-wheeler is used to deliver mails, another is being used for collecting mails from the letterboxes.”

The letterboxes are cleared twice a day — at 12noon and 4pm. Sources said there are 177 letterboxes in Patna and around 1.25 lakh articles are circulated in the city daily.

The three-wheelers and GPS-enabled vans are mostly used to attend to bulk consignments of clients. The official added: “Patna GPO has 81 clients, including banks, Life Insurance Corporation, passport office and accountant-general’s office, which deal in bulk articles. Around 25 clients send over 200 bulk articles and five clients send over 500 bulk articles on a daily basis.”

The articles are also categorised on the basis of weight. Items weighing less than 2kg are put in the category of letters, those weighing between 2kg and 35kg are categorised as bulk articles and those weighing above 35kg are categorised as cargo.

Apart from ensuring computer-friendly service, India Post has also been reinventing itself over the past few years.

Anil said: “India Post, in 2008, reinvented a system of mailing letters from home to bring postal services to the doorstep of residents. People can hand over their letters or mails to a postman who comes home for delivery. The postmen are instructed to carry postal stamps with them, which they affix at doorstep of the customer. Residents can also mail speed post through this system — the postman can hand over the receipt of the order to the customer on the next delivery.”

He, however, added that unawareness about the service has led to a poor response.