Daylight Savings Time: Why is the US congress split on this matter

Take away time zones and they will have to start.

Just scheduling government office times will become a nightmare. Imagine an again h that has offices all across the country. Where will they even start with office hours?

Guess what the first thing on the agenda will be: drawing time zones.

It’s no more difficult than it is now.
Right now, many business start at 9AM. But, you still need to figure out what time zone you are in to know when it’s OK to call.
With Universal UTC (UUTC?) Business hours will vary based on time zone. So what - you still need to know what time zone you are calling.

Plus you would have work days that straddle actual days. Like it would change from Thursday to Friday in the middle of a normal workday. Yes, that’s how graveyard shifts work now but that is a small minority of people. It’s just culturally untannable.

Well, most people in the US prefer Daylight Saving Time so who is being selfish? From a poll @DrDeth posted a few days ago:

Six in 10 Americans (61%) would do away with the nation’s twice-a-year time change while a little over one-third (35%) want to keep the current practice. Those who want to stick with a single year-round time prefer to have later sunrise and sunset hours (44%) than the earlier setting offered by standard time (13%).

< snip >

Other polls about resetting the nation’s clocks have been conducted in the past year, but not always with the same findings. A National Sleep Foundation survey conducted by Langer Research in January 2021 yielded a similar pattern to the Monmouth results, but it showed a clear majority preference for permanent daylight saving time (54%) and a lower preference for maintaining the practice of resetting clocks (27%).

SOURCE: Monmouth University Poll: More prefer making daylight saving time permanent

Unless I’m badly misreading what you’ve posted, 61% of those polled agree with my position, which advocates doing away with the twice-a-year time change.

Yes. And most prefer permanent DST.

I think I’ve allowed myself to be misunderstood here. I don’t care at all if DST is made permanent or abolished. I just want to end this practice of changing the clocks twice a year.

But your intentions were good.

Oh lord, what’s that music I hear?

:smirk:

Dr. Mercotan, you musical Animal

It’s not too bad for most places. At the ends, Los Angeles (UTC-0800) has UTC date change at 4pm local. And, Melbourne (UTC+1100) has UTC date change at 11am local. So, only one or two hours of typical 9am-5pm office hours on the other date.

(Totally ignoring Pacific islands, but it’s not like “island time” isn’t already a thing.)

I live near the central rib of the Eastern Time Zone, and I say down with DST forever. I’ve been wishing my whole life that DST would go away, and I’m glad they’re finally seriously talking about it.

Each time zone is ideally 15 degrees of longitude wide; every meridian that’s a multiple of 15° longitude is the central rib of its ideal time zone, which extends 7.5° to either side. The ideal Eastern Time Zone has its central rib at 75°W (near Trenton, NJ), its eastern edge at 67.5°W: eastern Maine. So that worked out well. Its western edge at 82.5° in the center of Ohio. So western Ohio, Michigan, and western Ontario are Eastern zone but too far west.

That’s the least popular option among Dopers (only 12%).

Not to mention most of Indiana.

I suspect that is because the Dope skews to older people and older people tend to prefer standard time.

They’re not though. They’re seriously talking about doing away with winter time. That’s the proposal on the table: permanent DST.

I grew up o Ohio, and I loved being on the western edge of the time zone. Later sunrise and later sunset all year round. Moving East I began to hate winter time even more.

Maybe that should be the goal: draw time zones to maximize the populations that are on the western edge of a zone.

[pops in]

Whatever the decision is on DST versus Standard, someone is going to be unhappy.

I don’t really care what solution they go with so long as it means I never have to change a clock or my sleep patterns again.

Maybe we could just split the difference. The people who want DST will have things start half an hour later than they want, and the people who want standard will have things start half an hour earlier than they want, and everyone can be miserable together.

[aside to @Thudlow_Boink] Isn’t DST winter and Standard summer?

[pops out]

Nope, just the opposite.

Standard time: the gray choice for gray people everywhere. :wink: And yes, I’m gray too.