Time Zones and Daylight Savings

Daylight Saving Time Is Terrible: Here's a Simple Plan to Fix It
Losing another hour of evening daylight isn't just annoying. It's an economically harmful policy with minimal energy savings.
ALLISON SCHRAGERNOV 1 2013, 10:45 AM ET

Daylight saving time ends Nov. 3, setting off an annual ritual where Americans (who don’t live in Arizona or Hawaii) and residents of 78 other countries including Canada (but not Saskatchewan), most of Europe, Australia and New Zealand turn their clocks back one hour. It’s a controversial practice that became popular in the 1970s with the intent of conserving energy. The fall time change feels particularly hard because we lose another hour of evening daylight, just as the days grow shorter. It also creates confusion because countries that observe daylight saving change their clocks on different days.

It would seem to be more efficient to do away with the practice altogether. 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. Being out of sync with European time changes was projected to cost the airline industry $147 million a year in travel disruptions. But I propose we not only end Daylight Saving, but also take it one step further.

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. After that we won’t change our clocks again—no more daylight saving. This will result in just two time zones for the continental United States. The east and west coasts will only be one hour apart. Anyone who lives on one coast and does business with the other can imagine the uncountable benefits of living in a two-time-zone nation (excluding Alaska and Hawaii).

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. According to Time and Date, a Norwegian Newsletter dedicated to time zone information, America started using four time zones in 1883. Before that, each city had its own time standard based on its calculation of apparent solar time (when the sun is directly over-head at noon) using sundials. That led to more than 300 different American time zones. This made operations very difficult for the telegraph and burgeoning railroad industry. Railroads operated with 100 different time zones before America moved to four, which was consistent with Britain’s push for a global time standard. The following year, at the International Meridian Conference, it was decided that the entire world could coordinate time keeping based on the British Prime Meridian (except for France, which claimed the Prime Median ran through Paris until 1911). There are now 24 (or 25, depending on your existential view of the international date line) time zones, each taking about 15 degrees of longitude.

Now the world has evolved further—we are even more integrated and mobile, suggesting we’d benefit from fewer, more stable time zones. Why stick with a system designed for commerce in 1883? In reality, America already functions on fewer than four time zones. 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. But for the last three years I lived in a state of constant confusion, I rarely knew the time and was perpetually an hour late or early. And for what purpose? If everyone functions an hour earlier anyway, in part to coordinate with other parts of the country, the different time zones lose meaning and are reduced to an arbitrary inconvenience. Research based on time use surveys found American’s schedules are determined by television more than daylight. That suggests in effect, Americans already live on two time zones.

It’s true that larger time zones would seem to cheat many people out of daylight by removing them further from their true solar time. But the demands of global commerce already do that. Many people work in companies with remote offices or have clients in different parts of the country. It’s become routine to arrange schedules to coordinate people in multiple domestic time zones. Traders in California start their day at 5 am to participate in New York markets. True, not all Californians work on East Coast time, but research by economists Daniel Hamermesh, Catlin Meyers, and Mark Peacock showed communities are more productive when there’s more time coordination. Californians who work on Eastern time require services that can accommodate their schedule and see less of their families on Pacific time.

Frequent travel between the coasts causes jet lag, robbing employees of productive work time. With a one-hour time difference, bi-costal travel would become almost effortless. It might make international business harder, but it’s hard to say for certain. The east coast would be seven hours behind continental Europe, but one hour closer to time zones in Asia. Also, the gains from more frequent inter-state communication might outweigh the cost of extra international coordination.

In 1983, Alaska, which naturally spans four time zones, moved most of the state toa single time zone (except for an Native American reservation near Ketchikan and a few western Aleutian islands). The longitudinal distance of Alaska is nearly equal to the entire continental United States, yet the state functions, albeit with some tension, on one time zone. China has been on one time zone since 1949, despite naturally spanning five time zones.

Spain technically should be on Greenwich Mean Time but it is on Central European time. Many Spaniards believe being out of sync with solar time lowers productivity. But that is because the Spanish workday has not fully integrated with the rest of Europe. The major factor throwing them off is the three –hour lunch that many Spaniards and school children observe which starts at 2 p.m. This shows that optimal time zones account for commerce and common cultural boarders, not just longitude. The problems Spain has, being on Central European Time, wouldn’t apply to America because states are better economically integrated and already follow similar work schedules.

Sure, moving the continental states to two time zones would cause two-hour jumps between adjacent time zones and America won’t line up with the time zones of countries directly north and south, unless this catches on as a global trend. But the discontinuity ship already sailed when rich Western countries haphazardly adopted daylight saving and most other countries didn’t. Time is already arbitrary, why not make it work in our favor?

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A Liberal MPP in Ottawa introduced a new private member's bill this week (April, 2019) that would make Ontario's daylight savings time permanent. The bill, initiated by Orléans MPP Marie-France Lalonde, would scrap the daylight savings time changes. If passed, Ontarians will no longer have to spring forward and fall back an hour every year.

Lalonde's website states, "It is time to stop changing our clocks twice a year. It is time to protect sunshine."

If it passes, Bill 98 - which has been named the Sunshine Protection Act - would make daylight savings time permanent on November 1st, 2020. That means Sunday, March 8th, 2020 would be the final time the province moves its clocks an hour forward.

Lalonde says on the Bill's website, "Study after study has shown the many benefits of a year-round Daylight-Saving Time. We need to respect evidence as we move forward in a new way"

She has reportedly claimed that switching the clocks results in confusion for Ontarians and is an inconvenience to businesses.

"We also know there's an impact on productivity [and] sadly on our roads, there is a significant impact on the safety of our roads because of those changes," she said. According to Lalonde, "Permanent DST means people who work a standard day shift – and kids who go to school during the day – get more daylight after work. It means getting up when it is a bit darker in exchange for an extra hour of light after work."

She also declared that sunsets in the middle of winter would be at approximately 6:00 PM, rather than 5:00 PM, and sunrises would be at 8:30 AM instead of 7:30 AM.

On the Sunshine Protection Act's website, numerous benefits to permanent Daylight Saving Time are outlined. Below is the list of benefits from the website:

• Children get more exercise on days with later sunsets;
• Rates of outdoor robberies decline;
• Reduce traffic-related deaths, especially for pedestrians;
• No switching clocks back and forth every year;
• No loss of productivity due to the time change.

"People are sick of watching the sun set while they are still at work," says MPP Lalonde. "Let’s protect our sunshine and make Ontario a safer and happier place."

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DSC said:

I repeat my earlier question. Why are you bumping a 6 years old thread with non-news and now posting a map showing that part of Ontario is not in the Eastern Zone - as it hasn't been for decades.

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In Canada, the following provinces and territories are part of the Eastern Time Zone:

• Ontario, most of
• Quebec, most of
• Nunavut, most of

All observe daylight saving time in sync with the United States, with very localized exceptions.

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Towered said:

I for one would love to see this silly time change twice a year finally be scrapped.

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• Ending the twice-annual time change. Standard time it is.
• Aligning all existing time zones with provincial/territorial boundaries
• Bringing Newfoundland into Atlantic time
• Where it makes sense (as in certain parts of the country and in certain industries) work hours would be adjusted a bit in the winter/summer months.

hw621 said:

It seems ION is running way more smoothly that Ottawa

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JasonParis said:

I'd like the following:

• Ending the twice-annual time change. Standard time it is.
• Aligning all existing time zones with provincial/territorial boundaries
• Bringing Newfoundland into Atlantic time
• Where it makes sense (as in certain parts of the country and in certain industries) work hours would be adjusted a bit in the winter/summer months.

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