Four Solutions to Daylight Saving Time

I know I often blog about technology, cybersecurity, security (in general,) society, and their intersection. But this is the Autumnal Time-Change Weekend.

Author’s Note: I started writing this blog on the Saturday before Daylight Saving Time’s “Spring Forward.” I had completed the first draft and went to bed. By the next morning, the time change happened. My wife and I listened to the NPR Sunday Puzzle twice, as we often do, and I went to work on this blog in my office at home. I kept an eye on the clock, knowing I’d have a planned early departure from the house.

At (what seemed like) the correct time, I put my work down and prepared to go about my errands. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was “an hour later!” I hadn’t reset the clock in my office! I’d been bitten by the Daylight Saving time change while blogging against changing our clocks. I suppose that’s the irony of the Universe.

Perhaps one of the most perplexing days I spent traveling was on a time-change weekend. I flew from Colorado Springs to Phoenix via Chicago. Did I mention this was a time-change weekend? My body had no idea what timezone it thought it should be in.

CNN points out that we must prepare to lose an hour’s sleep as we approach springtime. https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/09/health/leep-adaptation-daylight-saving-spring-forward-wellness/index.html

From an engineer’s viewpoint, I see four solutions to the Daylight Saving conundrum. They become much more complex and challenging to accomplish as we go down the list. But each ultimately eliminates the requirement to change our clocks twice a year. They are:

?????????? Don’t move the clocks. Personally, I prefer Standard Time to avoid all the problems that “Saving” time creates.

?????????? Move once by half an hour, and then stay there.

?????????? Change the timezone boundaries.

?????????? Move both the North and South American continents.

Don’t move the clocks

Even though I don’t consider myself a “morning person,” the sleep tracking app on my phone says so. It calls me a “Morning Lark 5.” I’m not so sure, but that’s what the data indicates.

My first solution is to eliminate the whole time-change system. Personally, I like being on “Standard Time.” I like to wake up to sunshine, even if evenings get dark earlier. Going to work in daylight and eating dinner when it’s dark outside is appropriate to me.

This simple problem resolution has many benefits, including aligning with US States that don’t change. Forty years ago, while working in Colorado, I had a customer support user on Oahu. I knew I’d get a support call from the guy every Friday afternoon at 3:00 or 4:00 PM. Why the difference? Hawaii didn’t “do” Daylight Saving, and I knew I’d get a call from a bored system manager who was lonely on a Friday afternoon in paradise. I needed to keep track of his timezone in Hawaii to anticipate his call.

Despite the propaganda, there isn’t any saving “Daylight” anyway. The original theory (as legend tells us) is that Benjamin Franklin suggested Parisians move their clocks to save on lamp oil and candles. Another common myth is that the time change allows farm workers more time in their fields. Neither of these fabrications—or other related misconceptions—has a basis in reality.

There is no energy saving. During both World Wars and multiple energy crises, backers promoted Daylight Saving as a way of reducing energy consumption. This may seem intuitive. Studies show, sadly, that the opposite is true—Daylight Saving costs in energy usage.

By not moving our clocks, we also eliminate health problems. Multiple? studies show that severe medical problems increase after we “Spring forward.”

Lastly, we will experience more accidents after the daylight saving time change. This is especially true for motor vehicle collisions. The higher rate may be due to driving earlier, sleep deprivation, or both.

These health effects and increased accident rates linger long after the time change.

So, let’s stick with Standard Time.

Move half-an-hour

Our problem stems mainly from the concept of the “Prime Meridian.” Established in 1884 in Greenwich, England, it defined the 0° line of Longitude and helped define the Eastern and Western hemispheres of the Earth. Since the day is (generally speaking) 24 hours long, that’s how many slices we get. Each division is called a “Timezone” about 1,035 miles wide at the Equator. That’s slices equal to 15° wide.

Using a spot in Greenwich, England, as “ground zero” allows trains to run more predictably and ships to sail knowing their coordinates.

Here’s the issue: the continents don’t align with the timezones. I realize it is rather audacious for North America to be in the wrong spot, but that’s the way of the world.

We have the Daylight Savings ritual to compensate for the difference between geography and cartography. Forward an hour, back an hour, rinse and repeat.

The solution is to move once and then stay put. From Standard Time, we should move forward 30 minutes - and then not change again. Once and done!

This would also help us align with Newfoundland Time, a half-hour timezone in North America. We would match with the Indian subcontinent because it is entirely in one timezone, offset 30 minutes.

So, moving the clocks half an hour aligns the “time” with our usual daylight.

Yup, change once and never again.

Change the timezone boundaries

Several decades ago, I took my family on a road trip from Colorado Springs to Nashville, beginning on a hot summer day. On my windshield, I depended on my GPS device since my phone didn’t have one—long before Google Maps. I filled my car’s tank in a little prairie town called Burlington and then drove into Kansas. That’s when my car stalled out. A State Patrol officer arrived in a few minutes, and soon after, my vehicle restarted. We had a pleasant chat before he and I drove in different directions.

As it happened, my car stalled about 40 miles east of the state border with Colorado. If my cell phone connected to a tower to the east, it thought it was in Central Time. To the west, Mountain time! My GPS device was equally confused. You see, a 40-mile swath of Kansas is in Mountain time. Really? Really!

Since the timezone boundaries are arbitrary lines on a map - much like the Greenwich Meridian, let’s move them.

I’m not supporting or advocating anything about Russia, but they went from seven timezones down to four. We also have seven (if I counted correctly) timezones in North America. Let’s redraw the lines on the map—that’s all they are anyway—and align our clocks with how the world works.

Looking at a map of Western Europe and the United Kingdom, we see other strange timezone artifacts. For example, much of France, Spain, and Portugal are south of the British Isles rather than the rest of Western Europe. They are a full-timezone (geographically) from the rest of their compatriot nations. There’s even a proposal to move Spain back to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT.)

Redrawing the lines solves the time change problem and allows us to correct the mapping strangeness—at least for North America.

Plus, there is no more daylight-saving madness.

There are 14 US States in more than one timezone:

1.??????? Alaska - Hawaiian-Aleutian and Alaska

2.?????? Arizona - Mountain Standard and Mountain (not to mention Native Lands)

3.?????? Florida - Central and Eastern

4.?????? Idaho - Pacific and Mountain

5.?????? Indiana - Central and Eastern

6.?????? Kansas - Mountain and Central

7.?????? Michigan - Central and Eastern

8.?????? Nebraska - Central and Eastern

9.?????? Nevada - Pacific and Mountain

10.??? North Dakota - Mountain and Central

11.???? Oregon - Pacific and Mountain

12.???? South Dakota Mountain and Central

13.???? Tennessee - Central and Eastern

14.??? Texas - Mountain and Central (only two counties in Mountain)

That’s more than ? of all our states. We may be unable to fix alignment problems for every state (Alaska, mainly,) but we can certainly correct the most significant anomalies. This includes Central Time, starting 40 miles east of the Colorado border and the overlaps between Oregon and Idaho. I recently taught an online class with students in Austin and El Paso - they could be in the same timezone.

Move the continent

As I said, our problem derives from the Greenwich Meridian. From there, the world is split into 24 even timezones. If you do the math, they are 15 Degrees of Longitude wide or 1,035 miles across at the equator. This was simple and elegant when the Prime Meridian was designated in Greenwich, England.

While the Earth may be more-or-less round, our land structures don’t align with our neatly artificial timezone “slices.”

The most difficult solution is aligning the world with our arbitrary 24 timezones. That means we need to move to North America.

Let’s pick up North and South America and move them about 500 miles. It actually doesn’t matter to me whether they move eastward or westward, but they are in the “wrong” spot. Jokingly, it’s “time” to fix this.

I suspect it isn’t easy to move large land masses, but it becomes necessary to avoid the painful Daylight Savings Time experience every year.

It’s time to change something - pun intended

As a solution to the Daylight Saving Tango, I choose to adopt Standard Time year-round. There are three other alternatives, two of which don’t require transplanting large portions of the earth. Do you have a preference? Let us all know in the comments.