A Plan To Fix Daylight Savings Time By Creating Two National Time Zones 545
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?""
How do you like midnight? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Sunset at 3:11 p.m.? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Sunrise (Score:5, Interesting)
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?