Wouldn’t the reasonable proposal be that each state pick a time zone, any zone— unusual number of minutes or not— but stick with it year-round? (Let’s not worry about multiple zones within a single state for now.)
I’d say that that would have the potential to make things even more confusing between neighboring states, especially if a particular state decides to be contrarian. At a given moment, it could be 10am in Wisconsin, 12:17pm in Illinois, 2:30pm in Indiana, 11am in Iowa, etc.
Agreed!!!
- If we keep the time change process - adjust yourself to it by changing your bedtime (+ or -) 15 minutes for four consecutive days.
- Your favorite summer sport’s field of play has no lights. Staying on Standard Time cuts your evening playing time by an hour (as well as your BBQ time unless you enjoy it in the dark).
- If we eliminate the time change process - people at the extreme eastern and western points will not be satisfied (some will want Standard; some Daylight). Problem is that some time zones (e.g. Eastern in North America) are much wider than the 15 degrees of longitude that they were designed for. Do we narrow such time zones - risking placing two nearby populous cities in different time zones? Or do like China - make all of North America one time zone?
If your zones are not delineated by state boundaries, then you really do have a computer-science problem, albeit an easy one, to ensure that no two nearby cities end up on different times.
@Mark_Finn has just given a great synopsis of the underlying physics problem in his 3rd point.
The experience of the annual change of solar (real) sunrise / sunset times varies hugely north vs south. And the experience of that versus man-made timezones differs greatly depending on your position east versus west within your local time zone.
Which leads to my modest proposal for USA time zones specifically. To wit:
There is no need for time zones to be the same north / south. We could probably have just two time zones along our southern tier of states, have 4 zones in the mid latitudes and 6 or 8 zones in the northern tier of latitudes.
With the clock-time change dates and offset amounts optimized to make best use of the moving and changing daylight. So the two southern zones might have no DST, while the eight northern zones have 4 steps of 15 or 30 minutes each as fall sets in and a further 4 steps going the other way in the spring. While the middle tier of 4 zones retains something like the current behavior, with one 1-hour step in each direction per year.
While we’re at it, let’s fix the mid-tier dates so they better follow the sun, rather than the current 4 months of “standard” time and 8 months of “DST” time.
If you take the most easterly and westerly points of the Eastern time zone in Canada, you have (latitudes not too much of a factor here)
:
West: Thunder Bay ON (89 degrees longitude) - for today: sunrise: 7:46 am; sunset: 5:32 pm.
Longest day in June: 5:55 am - 10:02 pm. EDT
Shortest day in Dec.: 8:47 am - 5:03 pm EST
Middle: Montreal QC (73 degrees longitude) - for today: sunrise:6:38 am; sunset: 4:36 pm.
Longest day in June: 5:05 am - 8:47 pm. EDT
Shortest day in Dec.: 7:30 am - 4:14 pm EST
East: Natashquan QC (61 degrees longitude) - for today: sunrise: 6:05 am; sunset: 3:37 pm.
Longest day in June: 3:56 am - 8:20 pm EDT
Shortest day in Dec: 7:04 am - 3:06 pm EST
The Eastern time zone stretches over 28 degrees - almost the equivalent of two “normal” time zones of 15 degrees each. Those in the “west” would probably be content with year-round Standard Time (although kids would still go to school in the dark in the winter), while those in the “east” would want DST.
The difference here is that you presumably chose a career and/or a job that involves shift work. The rest of the country is not being given a choice in the matter (unless they move to a location that does not observe DST).
(Personally, I actually decided against a career as an operator at the local nuclear power plant despite having the relevant prior experience and several contacts there because the work involved not just shift work, but rotating shift work in an attempt to be fair—so everyone was treated the same way: that is, poorly. I seriously considered a job there because the work seemed to be interesting, challenging, and well-paying, but I couldn’t get past the downside of the rotating shift work. Everything I’ve read is that rotating shift work is one of the worst things you could do to your health and having done this type of shift work during my service in the U.S. Navy I had no desire to do it again. Indeed, it’s the main reason I left the submarine service after my initial commitment was up.)
Another difference may be that a lot of shift work is at least consistent – if you work the swing shift or the night shift, you work that shift all the time, possibly for years.
I believe there have been studies showing significant problems in people who get stuck with jobs at which they have to frequently change shifts.
It’s also true that individual ability to adapt varies considerably. What doesn’t bug one person at all can screw somebody else up massively.
Right, that’s what I was referring to in my last post regarding rotating shift work. It’s the worst of all worlds for individual health.
But I’ve seen it implemented in two situations: when you have fewer personnel than are needed to put everyone on a dedicated shift, and in a misguided attempt to treat everyone “fairly” (i.e. equally poorly).
In the latter case at the nuclear power plant, everyone works the day shift for five days followed by a couple of days off, then the swing shift for five days followed by a couple of days off, followed by the night shift for five days followed by a couple of days off, etc.
The former situation was followed on my submarine while at sea: 6 hours on duty (aka on “watch”), followed by 12 hours off. There were four 6-hour shifts to man over the course of a 24-hour day, but only three shifts of personnel (called watch sections) available. Do the math, and you see how awful this is for regular sleep. (Plus there were other complications that cut into one’s sleep even more.)
The Eastern time zone in Ontario actually goes even further west than that in places, as far as -92.03 (the furthest west point of Quetico Provincial Park). There, the longest day in June is 5:06 AM to 9:12 PM and The shortest day in December is 8:56 AM to 5:16 PM.
The easternmost point of land in the eastern time zone is at -61.26 up in Nunavut.
Canada’s eastern time zone covers nearly 31 degrees of latitude on land! And goes as far west as Duluth, MN (which is well into the Central time zone, of course). But the extreme westernmost small bits of the Eastern time zone don’t do Daylight Saving Time.
Overwide timezones dating from the era when being on the same TZ as the main commercial or governmental capital city carried some great benefit are a bane and should be remedied forthwith. It’d probably solve a good 50% of the legit whining from the folks most harmed by the current TZ configuration and changeover dates. Nothing will solve the IMO illegit whining of the inconvenienced entitled.
The longitudinal width of US eastern time zone is bad, but nothing as bad as the Canadian eastern time zone. Which of course is made all the worse by Canada being even more northerly than the top of the US.