Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
PBC-1966 has a point - why not make it Standard Time (which we just left). What concerns me is winter mornings when the days are shorter anyway, and young children are getting on and off buses or in and out of cars, or walking to school, and navigating their way and crossing streets in darkness. DST in the winter will make it that much darker; it's bad enough already.
What concerns me is winter mornings when the days are shorter anyway, and young children are getting on and off buses or in and out of cars, or walking to school
That was one of the major concerns which arose in the U.K. experiment 50 years ago. In addition to safety issues of walking to school in the dark, many teachers reported that it was much harder to get the children motivated at the start of the school day when they'd already had to get out of bed and make their way to school in the dark. I believe a parents' group in Indiana said much the same thing when DST was adopted statewide, due to the problems in Eastern Time areas I mentioned earlier.
In summary (and in view of the moderator's note to the original post), my arguments are:
1. For scrapping the twice yearly changing of clocks;
2. Against doing it by making DST permanent for the reasons I've already explained;
and therefore:
3. the sensible way to proceed would be to adopt Standard time year round.
That was one of the major concerns which arose in the U.K. experiment 50 years ago. In addition to safety issues of walking to school in the dark, many teachers reported that it was much harder to get the children motivated at the start of the school day when they'd already had to get out of bed and make their way to school in the dark. I believe a parents' group in Indiana said much the same thing when DST was adopted statewide, due to the problems in Eastern Time areas I mentioned earlier.
In summary (and in view of the moderator's note to the original post), my arguments are:
1. For scrapping the twice yearly changing of clocks;
2. Against doing it by making DST permanent for the reasons I've already explained;
and therefore:
3. the sensible way to proceed would be to adopt Standard time year round.
I disagree. FWIW, some of Indiana did EST year round and not DST, but they changed back to changing times back in mid-2006. I moved there in August and was shocked to find it to be an hour later when I arrived than I had planned.
The problem with EST is that it really messes with your sleep schedule in places where the sunrise is already really early. I am in Chicagoland and in the summer the sun is already up at 5:15. I work an early schedule and that is when I normally get up, but 4:15? A lot of schools don’t end until mid- or even late June, so I’m not sure that this is a real benefit. In winter up north, it is already getting dark when many kids get out of school.
Keep in mind that the majority of the UK/N. Ireland is farther north than most of the large Canadian cities. If they switch to DST permanently, the northernmost parts won’t be light until nearly 10am. In the US, most places in the continental US are light a full hour earlier. It won’t have quite the same impact as it does there. FWIW, when I went to high school, school hours started at 7:25 and I always waited for the bus in the dark. The real issue there is that schools really shouldn’t be starting that early for any age group, not that it is dark outside.
I am very much in favor of picking one single time and sticking with it permanently. But in order to address the issues that people have about it getting light too early or dark too early or whatever, I'd want to rearrange the time zones to make them more "even," then redo how the time is assigned.
Ideally, the earth would have 24 time zones (one for every hour of the day), with each time zone being 15 degrees of longitude in width. And ideally, the boundaries between the zones would be on the lines of longitude that are increments of 15 degrees, give or take small deviations to allow the lines to follow obvious boundaries such as state or national borders.
In the contiguous United States, this would give us 5 time zones, as follows:
Atlantic (between 60-75 degrees longitude): consisting of the New England states as well as New Jersey and eastern New York State.
Eastern (75-90): since the Mississippi River flows roughly along the 90th degree of longitude, and it's a very obvious natural boundary, the Eastern zone would go westward to the river.
Central (90-105): westward from the Mississippi River to roughly the eastern borders of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.
Mountain (105-120): westward to a line that splits Washington and Oregon in half, then follows the north-south border between Nevada and California, then slices south through California until intersecting the Pacific Ocean at a point a little west of Santa Barbara. (Yes, this means that Los Angeles would be in the Mountain time zone.)
Pacific (120-135): western Washington, western Oregon, and the northern half of California.
Now, to set the time, I'd pick the central-most point (measured from east to west) in the Central zone, located as close to the north-south midpoint of the country as possible. This will be somewhere in the vicinity of Wichita, Kansas. Whenever the sun reached solar noon on the summer solstice at this location, I would set that time to be noon for the Central zone. That same time would be 1:00 p.m. for the Eastern zone and 2:00 p.m. for the Atlantic zone, as well as 11:00 a.m. in the Mountain zone and 10:00 a.m. in the Pacific zone. This would be the time that would be in effect year-round. By doing it this way, having noon at the midpoint, and having narrower zones (for a total of 5 in the continental U.S. instead of the current 4), the extremes of sunrise and sunset times should be mitigated.
As far as our other two states, Alaska would be divided into four zones. The Pacific zone (120-135) would include Southeastern Alaska at least as far west as Juneau. The next zone (135-150) would go westward to include roughly half of the main part of the state, including Anchorage and Fairbanks. The one after that (150-165) would include the rest of the mainland state, including Nome and Barrow, as well as the easternmost Aleutians; and the last one (165-180) would include the rest of the Aleutians. Hawaii would be in the same zone as western Alaska, while Midway would be in the same zone as the western Aleutians.
The real issue there is that schools really shouldn’t be starting that early for any age group, not that it is dark outside.
Isn't that really at the bottom of the whole issue? Artificially messing around with what time we call it in any particular location is never going to satisfy everybody for so long as individuals, businesses, schools etc. have some sort of fixed idea about what time (by the official clock) they should open, close, eat dinner, or whatever the case may be. Nothing can change the fact that the further north you go (or the further south in the southern hemisphere) the greater the difference in the number of daylight hours between winter and summer. Satisfy those who are more interested in having light in the early morning (by the official clock) and you'll likely annoy those who are more interested in having more light in the evenings and vice versa.
For so long as we use time zones which are an hour apart there is always going to be an hour's difference in sunrise/sunset times immediately either side of the dividing line, whatever times we assign to those places. For all practical purposes nobody is going to notice a difference in absolute terms between sunrise and sunset times in, let's say, Columbus, Ga. versus Phenix City, Ala., but crossing the bridge between them is going to result in a one-hour difference in sunrise/sunset by official time for so long as the Chattahoochee River is the time-zone boundary. Move the boundary and you just shift that problem to somewhere else.
It makes sense for the absolute zone boundaries spaced at 15-degree intervals to be "bent" a little to follow a natural feature such as a river, or a political boundary which is easily recognized such as a county line, as there's already that difference of up to an hour between two places anyway. But I don't believe it benefits anybody in the long run when a boundary is moved a long way from its natural position, then the time shift is compounded by adding another hour on by means of permanent DST.
The Indiana situation demonstrates this very well since it's an extreme example of a boundary which by rights shouldn't run through the state at all (and didn't prior to World War II - the Eastern/Central boundary then was the Indiana/Ohio state line - now the Eastern time zone reaches all the way to the Illinois border in places). Just take Indianapolis which on EST doesn't see sunrise until after 8 a.m. at its latest during the winter. Unless Indiana opts to move the entire state back to Central Time, with permanent DST sunrise at its latest in Indianapolis will be after 9 a.m. As much as a 4 a.m. sunrise might not suit some people in certain places, I'd bet that there are as many people who would be just as unhappy with a 9 a.m. sunrise, especially in the depths of cold midwestern winter. Parts of Michigan's upper peninsular on Eastern Time are also way into what should really be Central territory.
You can't please all of the people all of the time, so why not just keep things simple by following the "natural" 15-degree zones wherever possible (with those minor diversions which seem obvious given local geography and/or politics) and then let people, businesses etc. change their hours to suit the daylight hours, if that's what they want?
Assuming you don't want to change the prime meridian through Greenwich, you're out a little on those longitude measurements.
Eastern (GMT-5) is centered on 75 deg. west, so extends from 67.5 to 82.5 degrees, Central (GMT-6) is centered on 90 deg. so extends from 82.5 to 97.5 degrees, etc.
I live in WA State. There is an amazing number of people here who want yearlong DST. I believe we’ve had initiative petitions about it. I honestly don’t get it. We would have a longer period of daylight in the evening during the weeks of our shortest winter days, but little kids will be outside waiting for their school buses in the am when it is still dark. We have very, very short days here in the dead of winter.
It is inconvenient to have to set clocks forward and back. It is not pleasant to lose an hour’s sleep one night a year. I get that. I honestly don’t care that much. I’ll adjust to whatever. But I hope proponents have thought this through thoroughly.
So, IMO, I think it is OK to leave things as they are now.
Assuming you don't want to change the prime meridian through Greenwich, you're out a little on those longitude measurements.
Eastern (GMT-5) is centered on 75 deg. west, so extends from 67.5 to 82.5 degrees, Central (GMT-6) is centered on 90 deg. so extends from 82.5 to 97.5 degrees, etc.
Alright, now I'm confused. Isn't the Prime Meridian (0 longitude) the boundary between two time zones? On the other side of the world, isn't the International Date Line (what should be 180 longitude) the boundary between two time zones? If it's the midpoint, then I guess I'll need to redefine my time zones. Ugh.
Isn't the Prime Meridian (0 longitude) the boundary between two time zones?
No, the prime meridian was established by the Greenwich Observatory in London in the late 19th century, based on mean solar time at that location. So the GMT zone extends from 7.5 deg. west to 7.5 deg. east.
Similarly, the 180-degree international date line is also in the middle of its respective time zone (although that too zig-zags quite a bit to group certain islands together). So that zone is both GMT-12 hours and GMT+12 hours, which is obviously the same time, but on a different day depending upon which side of the international date line you're located.
No, the prime meridian was established by the Greenwich Observatory in London in the late 19th century, based on mean solar time at that location. So the GMT zone extends from 7.5 deg. west to 7.5 deg. east.
Similarly, the 180-degree international date line is also in the middle of its respective time zone (although that too zig-zags quite a bit to group certain islands together). So that zone is both GMT-12 hours and GMT+12 hours, which is obviously the same time, but on a different day depending upon which side of the international date line you're located.
GMT is also super zig zaggy. Iceland IS in the GMT despite being way west, while Western Sahara and Morocco are west of the UK and still GMT +1. France is directly south and +1 while Spain is farther west and +1, while Portugal is in GMT. In North America, I think Ontario goes out farther west than Michigan and much (but not all) of it is in the Eastern time zone.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
