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Daylight Savings Time Reform | |||||||||||||||||
Daylight savings time has long been fought over. Here, I propose a simple solution that will end daylight savings time and avoid future problems. This fall, clocks should be set back 30 minutes versus 1 hour. When that happens, the time will become our new standard time year round. This makes sense simply because it gives a compromise to both moving forward and backward each Spring and Fall. In addition, it allows people to avoid the cost and inconvenience of switching time twice every year.
Jason Franklin, Jun 03 2008
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A recent article indicated an analysis showed no economic benefit for the switch. Here in Helsinki you can still see a bit of daylight at midnight in the summer and days in winter are very short so the switch is more a matter of staying in sync with the rest of the world. A half hour doesn't do much.
I believe 'regular' time is still designed to coincide with the sun being straight-up at noon. I think that's a good idea and I'd hate to lose that relationship.
I would be in favor of nixing DST all-together, but people do benefit by using the early sun in the summer, shifting their life to an earlier hour and I'm not sure that many workplaces are set-up for people moving their schedules on their own. Maybe on one day, every business would all go to arriving at 7am instead of 8am, but the end results are the same as DST.
DST is a pain in the schedule!There is too much complexity as it is, and in many cases is little more than political posturing and meddling.DST only makes sense at temperate (mid-)latitudes. In tropical zones, there is no summer to make savings in, and in [ant]arctic zones, there is plenty of sun in the summer and no need to save it.However, each nation blithly sets its own changeover dates, so we have to look up who is on what time *way* too much. Simplify it.We (temperate zones only) should all change at the equinoxes, and all by 1 hour. All time based on UTC with an exact number of hours offset. No half hours, no fudges.Anything else makes life too complicated for no gain.
I have two potential time-zone proposals for the USA:
- There are currently six time zones: four in the mainland (-5 to -8), Alaska (-9), and Hawaii (-10). Eliminate daylight savings time, and just have the straight time zones.
- Consolidate time zones AND eliminate daylight savings time. For example, consolidate Eastern and Central into -5, Mountain and Pacific into -7, and Alaska and Hawaii into -9. Down to three time zones.
You might think three time zones for the USA sounds weird, but think about it: Spain all the way to Poland is one time zone (+1). So is all of China (+8).
At latitudes with around 16 hours of daylight in summer and 8 in winter, DST makes lot of sense. In winter Normal Time places daylight bewteen 8AM and 4PM, plus or minus 30 minutes depending of longitude. In summer NT would set daylight between 4AM and 8PM, while ST shifts that to 5AM to 9PM. There are far more advantages to outdoor activities and saving in house lights use by having the extra hour of daylight in the evening rather than in the morning. People are much more active between 8PM and 9PM than between 4AM and 5AM. However an extra hour of daylight between 4PM and 5PM in winter doesn't compensate for the difficulties caused by night light between 8AM and 9AM, in my opinion.