What to do about Daylight Saving Time?

If I had a thing to give you

I would tell you one more time

That the world is always turning

Toward the morning

Eponymous song by Gordon Bok with Ed Trickett and Ann Mayo Muir from the album Turning Toward the Morning (1975)

Here we are on the cusp of the Daylight Saving Time Change

At least here in North America, we are about to roll the clocks forward an hour as we Spring Forward. Originally devised by Benjamin Franklin in 1784, it was seen as a way for the French to use fewer candles. According to the Franklin Institute, the French could save money by waking earlier and taking advantage of more daylight in the evening.

Over the centuries, we’ve seen that the money-saving doesn’t exist. There is no energy saving to speak of, and the consequences of changing our clocks are high. Northwestern Medicine says changing our circadian rhythms and our sleep homeostasis leads to sleep deprivation, cognitive health problems, depression, weight gain, and headaches. There’s more that I haven’t listed.

Sponsored by senators Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fl.,) the Sunshine Preservation Act would make Daylight Saving Time permanent (again). This was a bad idea in the past, but it follows Internet RFC # 1925, called The Twelve Networking Truths:

(11) Every old idea will be proposed again with a different name and a different presentation, regardless of whether it works.

Please use the comments section to ask me about RFCs if you want to know.

Quoting from NBC5 in Chicago, President Trump has said:

The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient and very costly to our Nation.

Like many of Mr. Trump’s pronouncements, people aren’t sure what he’s advocating and has done nothing about the problem.

Four Solutions

About a year ago, I wrote about Daylight Saving Time on LinkedIn (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/four-solutions-daylight-saving-time-bob-withers-yxxnc), but I thought it was time to revisit the subject. This is especially so because our politicians have also mentioned it.

So, as an engineer, I see four solutions to the problem of Daylight Saving Time:

• Spring Ahead one-half-of-an-hour This solves the problem of uneven sunrise and sunset times in North America. Looking at the Sun Graph from TimeAndDate.com at the top of this Blog, you’ll see the hour-long jumps in March and November that cause all our problems. If you slide the outer edges up by half an hour and the middle down by the same amount, you end up with a smooth curve and no discontinuities. We gain this by “Springing Forward” half-an-hour and not changing again. It gives the Morning Larks and the Night Owls each extra daylight. If we’re already in Daylight Saving Time, we can just Fall Back 30 minutes.
• Don’t Change the Clocks The Markey-Rubio proposal and what Mr. Trump are saying (we think?,) are variants on a theme that we don’t move the clocks after we change to Saving Time. Or don’t change. The problem is that, if we Spring Forward, we benefit the people who like it sunny later and punish half the population. At least, though, we’d be done with the Time Change Tango.
• Move the Timezone Boundaries Our problem stems from the creation of the Prime Meridian at Greenwich (England) in 1884. While giving the world a consistent time-base was worthy and noble, the planet’s hourly slices don’t align with Earth’s geography. Each slice is 15° wide, or about 1,035 miles wide at the equator. This leads to strange boundaries that don’t fit our world. For example, the Central timezone begins 40 miles (~65 km) east of the Kansas-Colorado border. A quarter of the U. S. States span more than one timezone. The lines are arbitrary and are drawn on maps that we create. Let’s move the lines and then not change the clocks after we rejigger the boundaries.
• Let’s move the continent Our problem stems from the fact that North (and South) America don’t fall nicely into one of the 24 slices at 15° intervals from Greenwich. If you believe in a deity (or deities), it was incredibly rude of them to put our continents in the wrong place. It would probably take a significant engineering effort, but this would solve the problem that makes us Spring Forward and Fall Back.

There is a fifth idea, which is to do nothing and continue with the Time Change Tango. I’m sure that there are people who like things as they are. But, personally, I’m tired of stressing my circadian rhythms — pun intended.

Read More about My Solution

In about 800 words, that is the TL;DR version of solving the Daylight Saving disruption. To read more about Daylight Saving history, interpreting the “Sun Graph” at the top of this blog, and more about how to solve this, follow me on Medium.com at What to do about Daylight Saving Time?