Rearranging some of the zones would make a ton of sense-- Michigan probably really ought to be on Central time. The single national time with a variable business day seems like a nightmare for any business that extends beyond one metro area.
Just realized that this spring-forward hour needs to be a federal holiday with one hour of mandatory holiday pay. Doing it on a Friday will give people the most time to adapt before Monday; making it a paid holiday would prevent businesses from benefiting from reduced energy bills, in exchange for making everyone else suffer by losing sleep or free time. If everyone gets that hour paid, no matter what, then people with swing, mid, off-schedule, or hourly shifts are compensated too.
People need to be compensated for the inconvenience if the benefits of spring forward are large enough to justify keeping it.
Surprised you didn't discuss early winter sunsets under the current system. Thats the real cost for me. Darkness when I wake up - no big deal. Watching it get dark while still at work - depressing.
How about letting 12 be the time the Sun is at its highest, and adjust the time the workday starts? The exact same amount of change to the daily rhythm, but imposed only on those who are actually impacted.
The problem is that the time difference is an hour for every fifteen degrees of longitude. That's about 1000 miles at the equator, but more like 500 at the latitude of the US. So two cities a hundred miles apart would need all their business schedules to be different by around ten minutes. That wouldn't be a big deal in 1826, but in 2026 that's a trivial separation, and would introduce massive logistical hassles for any business that extends outside one metro area.
Yeah I got that. So I'd have e.g. schools and businesses at the eastern end of the timezone start at 7.30 and at the western end at 8.30, moved by say 1h later in the winter. It just seems really weird to move the clock so everybody can have the same text written on the hourly schedule.
Yeah I got that. So I'd have e.g. schools and businesses at the eastern end of the timezone start at 7.30 and at the western end at 8.30, moved by say 1h later in the winter. It just seems really weird to move the clock so everybody can have the same text written on the hourly schedule.
This was a great breakdown. I would be for moving the spring forward to the last business hour on a Friday. To go from 4PM to 5PM and instantly start the weekend. Instead of automatically losing an hour of deep sleep. It is a way of gaining an hour even though we are losing an hour. I think most people are upset about losing an hour of sleep but would embrace teleporting into the weekend.
My flippant reform proposal is to keep the "fall back" hour as is, because everyone likes and extra hour of weekend, but phase in the "spring forward" change by moving forward five minutes every Saturday for twelve weeks starting after New Year's. Nobody would feel that, and it gets you back to daylight time in late March.
I am not organized enough to do that. I live my life one day at a time. My biggest gripe is that I lose an hour of sleep because I forget I am losing an hour half the time. I like gaining the hour in the fall, but if I have to lose an hour in the spring, then I would rather gain an hour of sleep and lose an hour of working more (assuming it is a paid holiday hour) and be launched into the weekend from 4PM turning into 5PM on a Friday. That last hour always seems to drag. I do think most people like fall back but hate spring forward.
The debate is how to make spring forward not suck so much. Getting rid of the entire system is one option, but there are likely better ones I haven’t considered.
Thanks for the explainer. One question: You mentioned the original motivation: energy savings. I remember my mom explaining this to me in 1974 as "When people get up, they tend to turn lights on no matter what, but at the end of the day, they don't turn lights on until it's really too dark to see." Which made perfect sense to me.
Also, I thought it was cool walking to school in full darkness, because young teen.
I understand that a, if not the, big gripe back then was ... a big increase in kids getting hit by cars while walking to school in the dark.
But back to energy savings. I have since heard (many times, since DST arguments are a thing that have exploded along with the rise of social media) that the argument about DST saving energy has been shown to be untrue. Have you ever heard anything along these lines?
I don’t have a clear memory of 1974, but I definitely remember the energy savings thing being the justification put forth for the time change as a general matter. I’m not sure the math behind that ever really worked, honestly, but it was far from the silliest thing that’s ever been advanced as an essential element of a conservation program.
These days, I suspect the energy argument could probably be reversed— lighting has gotten a lot more efficient over the last few decades, and air-conditioning has become a lot more widespread. I wouldn’t be surprised if later sunsets actually lead to MORE energy use nowadays from people keeping the A/C on later in the day than they otherwise might. That’s certainly an argument that Arizona has used to explain not participating in the clock change.
Another way to split the difference would be to adjust the time zone boundaries. A non-starter, I know, but still…
Or adopt the Chinese solution of a single national time zone, adjusting local opening/closing times to suit. (Sorry, AK & HI)
Rearranging some of the zones would make a ton of sense-- Michigan probably really ought to be on Central time. The single national time with a variable business day seems like a nightmare for any business that extends beyond one metro area.
Just realized that this spring-forward hour needs to be a federal holiday with one hour of mandatory holiday pay. Doing it on a Friday will give people the most time to adapt before Monday; making it a paid holiday would prevent businesses from benefiting from reduced energy bills, in exchange for making everyone else suffer by losing sleep or free time. If everyone gets that hour paid, no matter what, then people with swing, mid, off-schedule, or hourly shifts are compensated too.
People need to be compensated for the inconvenience if the benefits of spring forward are large enough to justify keeping it.
I'm always for more money in my pocket!
Surprised you didn't discuss early winter sunsets under the current system. Thats the real cost for me. Darkness when I wake up - no big deal. Watching it get dark while still at work - depressing.
How about letting 12 be the time the Sun is at its highest, and adjust the time the workday starts? The exact same amount of change to the daily rhythm, but imposed only on those who are actually impacted.
The problem is that the time difference is an hour for every fifteen degrees of longitude. That's about 1000 miles at the equator, but more like 500 at the latitude of the US. So two cities a hundred miles apart would need all their business schedules to be different by around ten minutes. That wouldn't be a big deal in 1826, but in 2026 that's a trivial separation, and would introduce massive logistical hassles for any business that extends outside one metro area.
Yeah I got that. So I'd have e.g. schools and businesses at the eastern end of the timezone start at 7.30 and at the western end at 8.30, moved by say 1h later in the winter. It just seems really weird to move the clock so everybody can have the same text written on the hourly schedule.
Yeah I got that. So I'd have e.g. schools and businesses at the eastern end of the timezone start at 7.30 and at the western end at 8.30, moved by say 1h later in the winter. It just seems really weird to move the clock so everybody can have the same text written on the hourly schedule.
This was a great breakdown. I would be for moving the spring forward to the last business hour on a Friday. To go from 4PM to 5PM and instantly start the weekend. Instead of automatically losing an hour of deep sleep. It is a way of gaining an hour even though we are losing an hour. I think most people are upset about losing an hour of sleep but would embrace teleporting into the weekend.
My flippant reform proposal is to keep the "fall back" hour as is, because everyone likes and extra hour of weekend, but phase in the "spring forward" change by moving forward five minutes every Saturday for twelve weeks starting after New Year's. Nobody would feel that, and it gets you back to daylight time in late March.
I am not organized enough to do that. I live my life one day at a time. My biggest gripe is that I lose an hour of sleep because I forget I am losing an hour half the time. I like gaining the hour in the fall, but if I have to lose an hour in the spring, then I would rather gain an hour of sleep and lose an hour of working more (assuming it is a paid holiday hour) and be launched into the weekend from 4PM turning into 5PM on a Friday. That last hour always seems to drag. I do think most people like fall back but hate spring forward.
The debate is how to make spring forward not suck so much. Getting rid of the entire system is one option, but there are likely better ones I haven’t considered.
Thanks for the explainer. One question: You mentioned the original motivation: energy savings. I remember my mom explaining this to me in 1974 as "When people get up, they tend to turn lights on no matter what, but at the end of the day, they don't turn lights on until it's really too dark to see." Which made perfect sense to me.
Also, I thought it was cool walking to school in full darkness, because young teen.
I understand that a, if not the, big gripe back then was ... a big increase in kids getting hit by cars while walking to school in the dark.
But back to energy savings. I have since heard (many times, since DST arguments are a thing that have exploded along with the rise of social media) that the argument about DST saving energy has been shown to be untrue. Have you ever heard anything along these lines?
I don’t have a clear memory of 1974, but I definitely remember the energy savings thing being the justification put forth for the time change as a general matter. I’m not sure the math behind that ever really worked, honestly, but it was far from the silliest thing that’s ever been advanced as an essential element of a conservation program.
These days, I suspect the energy argument could probably be reversed— lighting has gotten a lot more efficient over the last few decades, and air-conditioning has become a lot more widespread. I wouldn’t be surprised if later sunsets actually lead to MORE energy use nowadays from people keeping the A/C on later in the day than they otherwise might. That’s certainly an argument that Arizona has used to explain not participating in the clock change.
Thanks. Makes both of those make sense.