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A Plan To Fix Daylight Savings Time By Creating Two National Time Zones
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Allison Schrager writes in the Atlantic that losing another hour of evening daylight isn't just annoying. It's an economically harmful policy with minimal energy savings. "The actual energy savings are minimal, if they exist at all. Frequent and uncoordinated time changes cause confusion, undermining economic efficiency. There's evidence that regularly changing sleep cycles, associated with daylight saving, lowers productivity and increases heart attacks." So here's Schrager's proposal. This year, Americans on Eastern Standard Time should set their clocks back one hour (like normal), Americans on Central and Rocky Mountain time do nothing, and Americans on Pacific time should set their clocks forward one hour. This will result in just two time zones for the continental United States and the east and west coasts will only be one hour apart. "America already functions on fewer than four time zones," says Schrager. "I spent the last three years commuting between New York and Austin, living on both Eastern and Central time. I found that in Austin, everyone did things at the same times they do them in New York, despite the difference in time zone. People got to work at 8 am instead of 9 am, restaurants were packed at 6 pm instead of 7 pm, and even the TV schedule was an hour earlier. " Research based on time use surveys found American's schedules are already determined more by television than daylight suggesting, in effect, that Americans already live on two time zones. Schrager says that this strategy has already been proven to work in other parts of the world. China has been on one time zone since 1949, despite naturally spanning five time zones and in 1983, Alaska, which naturally spans four time zones, moved most of the state to a single time zone. "It sounds radical, but it really isn't. The purpose of uniform time measures is coordination. How we measure time has always evolved with the needs of commerce.," concludes Schrager. "Time is already arbitrary, why not make it work in our favor?""
The title contains a pet peeve of mine: it's Daylight Saving Time, not 'savings.' It's not a bank where you deposit an hour and get it back in a 'savings account.'
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time zones exist because the sun sets later in the west than it does in the east. It was a fact I knew but didn't fully grasp until I moved 400 miles east along roughly the same latitude in the same eastern time zone. We were sitting outside enjoying a camp fire on the summer solstice when some one asked when the sun would set. Having spent many a summer outside at my previous place I knew it would roughly be 9pm. however I didn't take into account the difference 400 miles makes. The sun really set 30 minutes earlier.
Now in a corporate world time zones only matter in relation to when other people will be at their desks. However in the real world, where one has kids, and after school sports, hell even trick or treating, it makes all the difference in the world. Those on the eastern edge will always be screwed by things shutting down earlier. As so much just can't be done after dark, and it gets really expensive to light up every field, park, and body of water just to be able to live life after work.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Who gives a crap what the clock says? We could all just use Coordinated Universal Time. On the east coast I'd wake up at 1000 UTC have lunch at 1700 eat dinner at 2200 and go to bed at 0300.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
The reason for timezones is to somewhat coordinate daylight with when we are up and about. Obviously this can be shift a bit each way and the seasons certain screw with that, but on the plan OP posted, the west coast would be light until after 1am in the Summer and remain dark until about 10am in the Winter.
If you'd want to do two zones, they should be at least two hours apart from each other.
I say just do away with daylight savings time altogether! All we really need is two time zones: one for east of the Mississippi and one for the west. Simplicity is underrated.
Is to abolish it. It serves no legitimate purpose anymore. Standard time for all!
You should move to Scandinavia. Then you'll realize how silly is is for Americans to bitch about when the sun rises and sets in the extreme months.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
And less so now when most clocks are set automatically, and the few that aren't have 'dst' switches. Get to work an hour earlier or an hour later. It is just one of those costs of living in society. I know some people are very compulsive, and this causes stress, but I see DST no more inconvenient than speed limits. If there is a real problem it is that instead of just going with majority rule on something that is largely trivial, some communities are boneheads and want everything their way.
That said, I think most of the reasons for DST have diminished with time. While switching is easier now, the world is different. The fact that the US is now completely linked with instant communication and many people are now no longer primarily part of one region is a factor.
At some point a rational discussion on this will be possible, and it will likely end. Some of this going to be generational. While some of the world have been using DST from the early 20th century, in the US has only been widespread for maybe 50 years. This means that some people who are very attached to it are still alive.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Why can't a conclusion be phrased as a statement instead of as a rhetorical question?
Part of the proposal here is to reduce the U.S. to two time zones. The Eastern time zone would be on the same time as what's now Central Standard Time.
I'm in Boston, MA. Under the proposed change, sunset in December would come at 3:11 p.m. Um, no, thanks.
"The actual energy savings are minimal, if they exist at all."
Blah, blah, blah...She obviously doesn't know if they're minimal, because she doesn't know if they exist. You can love or hate it, but at least if you're going to argue for one side or the other, present some fucking facts.
Just another day in Paradise
Only computers can use UTC because they do not need to sleep.
UTC doesn't tell you when to sleep.
Yes, China's 5 time zones operate on a single time zone, which works great if you're in Beijing, but sucks balls if you're one of the poor schmucks in Urumqi who has to get to work at 3am.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
When the Bush-era change happened, I supervised the change in my company, having to track the dozens of updates of Windows, Java, and Oracle (often because each one had to incorporate a patch to detect if one of the other two had not actually been patched). This amounted to basically $50,000 of my companies dollars wasted for no actual benefit - $50,000 just to say we still worked.
And the worst thing about it all was that even after all that money on our part, and on the part of Microsoft, Sun, and Oracle (who saw even less money relative to the efforts it took), nobody would be able to say 100% that it was "right". There still could have been one stupid little detail that would have gotten it wrong on the day of the switch or projecting forward to the switch-back.
Current estimates is that the DST change of 2005 cost the economy $5 billion in expenses *just to keep working at all* - that's 5 billion that wasn't spent on improvements, or new features, or anything actually giving new value to their customers. It simply ceased to exist, for the illusion of savings in other markets (energy and retail) that never materialized.
And I still saw most of my local trick-or-treaters after dark, so saying an extra hour of light for Halloween also was a pointless exercise.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
I've we're going to be ridiculously nerdy and arbitrary we could all just just use seconds since the start of 1970.
"When will you arrive?
"I'll be there at 1383.408 megaseconds. I'll call you in case I'm more than a kilosecond late."
What does it matter if we happen to live somewhere where the clocks say 7pm when the sun rises? I say one global time and you just use common sense when calling people far away ... like you got to do now when calling overseas anyways. I don't remember when daylight savings kicks in in Germany but I know they are ~4-6 hours away so sometime before noon seems okay.
Heck we could even schedule things with the sun like people that work for themselves (farmers, construction etc) already can. You go to work sunrise + 1hr and work whatever number of hours that are expected. Everyone gets some daylight hours to themselves sure more in summer than winter but you aren't trying to dance the time around so that you can try to get some daylight only to epically fail in the northern latitudes: I live near Toronto sunrise in the winter is ~8am and sunset around 5 so you can literally commute to work in the dark and it is dark by the time you live the office seeing the sun for 0 hrs a day isn't a good thing if for no other reason than sometimes you need to do something outside where you can see what you are doing.
I fight this in the office all the time and I don't see why cross office/company interaction needs to be any different: we need to remove the dependency on concurrent interaction. People send email and then knock on the door 10 min later and ask if you've seen it. We need to get in the habit of planning work enough that we can wait a couple days for a reply almost always and then learn to wait patiently not block waiting to make progress because we insist on dealing with things one at a time regardless of if the necessary person has time at the moment.
1. Human beings don't need daylight. Evolution disagrees with you. 2. Americans schedule their day based on television. The trends towards time shifting the medium are increasing. The television audience is decreasing due to competing forms of entertainment. 3. It would be easy. Our infrastructure is built around the current framework. Who here has seen bugs from moving DST this week? I know I have. 4. States would cooperate with this plan when we have two that ignore the established system. We have states that enjoy flaunting less intrusive national laws that effect far fewer individuals. 5. Congress can't even pass a budget. They have important issues that need to be addressed that they are unable to resolve. The ineptitude and inefficiencies are dragging down our economy, our reputation and our elected representatives seem to only be concerned with their own jobs. If you want to fix something, let's start with something that is actually broken.
The article seems to state that the problem is the constant changing of the time forward and backward due to DST. The proposed solution involves one final change at a regular DST interval, then no longer using DST. However, that change also involves redefining our four US timezones into two as well. I understand that it may be easier to make major timezone changes all at once, but I'm not sure the second is really related to the first.
I've seen other suggestions about simply not using DST anymore. It sure seems to me that today's modern technology and 24x7 scheduling make the idea of shifting daylight hours to different parts of the clock seem a bit outdated. Do we really save that much electricity on lighting to counteract the issues of dealing with changing the time around every six months?
Something I read previously suggested switching to Summer time and no longer using Winter time. Here in Michigan, it starts getting colder and darker earlier, then the DST change hits and it's suddenly dark pretty much as soon as you leave work. I'm not a fan of the author's suggestion to switch to Winter time (even if it is the "Standard" time) permanently. I'd much rather deal with dark mornings and have a little bit of light after work during the winter. I'm at the later edge of Eastern Time, so this effect should be even worse for those on the East Coast who would be seeing sunrise and sunset before me.
The author seems to make some reasonable points about people matching their activities to other timezones. I don't have enough experience to say whether that's really true for the majority of people, so as to justify converting the whole timezone. If we were to do this timezone rearrangement, the DST change might be a good time to do it, since people are already accustomed to moving their clocks an hour. However, I don't think it really has anything to do with the DST change, and personally I don't like the idea of my timezone moving to Winter time permanently.
Humans are diurnal (dI-UR-nal).
It means we sleep when it's dark and wake when it's light. (compare nocturnal)
The primary purpose of DST is to keep our scheduled wake time (as determined by school, work, etc) close to sunrise.
Everything else (energy savings! more shopping hours!) is just confusion and wishful thinking.
The controlling factor isn't east-west, it's north-south.
The further north you go, the more sunrise time varies with the seasons, and the more an adjustment like DST helps.
Stuffing the whole country into two time zones is a non-fix for a non-problem.
See also
How congress broke Daylight Savings Time
http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/letters/dst.html
I've[sic] we're going to be ridiculously nerdy and arbitrary we could all just just use seconds since the start of 1970.
Which might be fine for you, but those of us who would thus have been born long before the beginning of time might be justified in being a little miffed.
Time zones were useful when we worked with clocks and dead-tree calendars. Those are antiquated.
Modern comms make schedule adjustments easy and business "operating hours" would be more useful to all concerned if posted in GMT. If I need to contact a different country I don't have to figure out their time zone.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Why? It puts a maximum on how old we can get. I wouldn't mind being younger.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
That is bs! The reason why California wakes up with New York is because those who have to do. Those that don't, don't wake up. For example, what are the store hours or a best buy in California and in New York? http://stores.bestbuy.com/428/ and http://stores.bestbuy.com/187/. See that? Same hours! So in other words the best buy in California does not give a rats arse on when stores open in New York. They open according to the local timezone. Switch that into two timezones and things become confusing because those on either end of the zone will not appreciate the lack of sun.
The idea of two time zones is absolutely insane. I lived in Vienna while my wife lived in Zurich and there was an hour difference in sunrise and sunset. It was not nice to have to live and work in Vienna as it meant very early to rise and early to bed. I like the notion of time zones, and like the notion of switching because it really does make a difference. If it were up to me I would add a few more time zones because some cities at either side of a zone have really odd sunrise and sunset.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
schedules are already poorly coordinated with sunrise and sunset
Not that poorly. Sunrise is rarely at midnight, and noon corresponds roughly w/ the middle of the daylight period. Roughly is much better than not at all. As for electric lights and TV, there are still plenty of things that are affected by daylight. I've often been tempted to mow my lawn at night, but I find it easier if I can see what I'm doing. This is all the more important for people who work outdoors, and for outdoor recreation. Even as an acyclic night owl I realize that our lives are still affected by that big bright thing in the sky.
If you don't give a crap what the clock says, why do you care about time zones and daylight savings time?
:)
Primarily because my employer doesn't like me to start showing up an hour late all summer long.
I really don't care what the clock says - I care that we need to disrupt our sleep schedules twice a year. And why? We don't just lack a good reason for this nonsense; every year, a new crop of studies show that DST has the exact opposite of the intended effect.
Make it 2am at solar noon, for all it matters to me. Just leave it there year round.
I've[sic] we're going to be ridiculously nerdy and arbitrary we could all just just use seconds since the start of 1970.
Which might be fine for you, but those of us who would thus have been born long before the beginning of time might be justified in being a little miffed.
I believe numbers go negative, so you'd be ok...
Even if we conceded the utility of collapsing the US from four time zones to two, the Atlantic writer's proposal would certainly not be the way to go. One desirable characteristic of setting time zone boundaries is to minimize the difference, whether positive or negative, between the clock and solar time. If it didn't matter, she might as well have picked any two random zones in the world. She clearly is aware of that principle, but she blew it in the application. As her proposal stands, Central and Eastern would always observe Eastern. Okay. But Pacific and Mountain would observe Central! Think about it. Central does not get to observe its own true time, while two other time zones do observe it, with one of those having a two-hour offset! The obvious solution is this: Pacific and Mountain observe Mountain. Central and Eastern observer Central. Now you would be using the two time zones most central to the country, with no zone offset more than an hour from solar. And two of them would have no offset.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I don't see why we don't look into tilting the Earth's axis back perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. Bam! Problem solved. And none of those pesky seasons either.
It would be easy for your employer, and for schools to simply adjust the time at which people are expected to arrive. If some employers did it and others didn't, or some did it by different amounts or on different dates, it would also thin traffic at rush hour and lunch which could save lives, but cost more in labor for places that are only open at those times. If I were an employer I would have the work day begin after sunrise by the amount of my employees average commute, plus some margin. So your start time is different each day by a minute or two. I would rather have them mix up now and then and be a little late, than wake up in the dark and be groggy for a few hours.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
that changing what time your clock says has nothing to do with how long the Sun is visible, right?
Repeal Obamatime!
India has one time zone (since 1905). No daylight savings time. 2000 km East to West.
Works fine for them.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Of course if we start schools later, parents will want their work schedules later too. And if we do that, stores will need to adjust their hours to accomodate both employees and customers, and evening entertainment will probably want to start later. Coordinating all of that sounds tricky, so what if we just get together and chose an arbitrary date on which we will all start things an hour later?
People would be able to point at people and say "He's as old as time" and not be far wrong.
Americans seem to HATE the shit out of DST, why I don't know - it baffles me.
There's always these debates, every year same old arguments each time.
Fact is we lead mostly 9-5 lives. You can argue all you like that if I want more daylight, I should get up earlier and leave work earlier, that's never going to happen - life isn't going to change like that.
I love the shit out of DST, it's beautiful, every Melbournian I know loves it, in summer we get these awesome awesome long evenings of light, peoples moods are better, you can go out and so and enjoy stuff for hours. If you're fortunate enough to finish work around 4-ish you can really get a lot done in peak summer. It's cheery and it's great.
If anything, winter should be moved to DST too :/ I don't care if I'm going to work in the dark but coming home in the dark is gruesome and depressing.
As for the complexity of it, my PC's all do it automatically, my phone does it automatically, I need to change the time on my wristwatch, microwave and house clock. This is not a major issue.
3 DST