The US needs to retire daylight savings and just have two time zones—one hour apart.

Quartz ^ | November 1, 2013 | Allison Schrager

[Sergio]

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.

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[Billthedrill]

I say everybody goes GMT and to heck with the whole thing. The great part about that is that we'd have sunrise and sunset simultaneously everywhere in the world!

What's not to like?

[qam1]

Yep,

Where I live in June with DLS the sun rises ~5:30a and sets ~8:30p

without DLS it would rise ~4:30a and set ~7:30p

Whether the sun rises at 4:30 or 5:30am probably makes no difference to 99% of the people.

However, the sun setting at 8:30 vs 7:30 does have a big positive impact

[Gay State Conservative]

If it ain't broke don't fix it.We need uniform time keeping in this country for 1,000 different reasons.The farther you are from the equator the more your daylight hours will vary from June to December and there's no way to prevent that,short of changing the orbit of the planet.

[righttackle44]

Daylight savings time is not wondrous for us here in Phoenix. When we tried DST, we found that starting Little League, adult softball, and other outdoor activities at 7pm meant that it was still 110 sometimes.

Besides, this sounds very much like an Obama-type drill. Let's order everyone to do it our way.

So you guys quit saying your conservatives and then come up with blather like this.

[SkyDancer]

Can't have two time zones in the US because 1 day equals 24 hours and the earth is spherical so it is 360 degrees, and 360/24=15, so there is an hour difference every 15 degrees longitude, hence the different time zones you add or subtract an hour depending on which way you are going.

The United States roughly covers 40 degrees of longitude from the west coast to the east coast so there are three time zones (2.67 actually).

[righttackle44]

Yes, it is a controversial practice. It’s not controversial as long as you get your way, and some will whine and moan until they get it.

[TomGuy]

Condensing to 2 time zones may be a bit aggressive, but 3 might be do-able.

And getting rid of the time change would be good.

Set it at either regular/real time or at daylight saving time and leave it alone.

[dfwgator]

Besides, this sounds very much like an Obama-type drill. Let's order everyone to do it our way.

"From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. Silence! In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now... 16 years old!"

[Gay State Conservative]

There’s evidence that regularly changing sleep cycles, associated with daylight saving, lowers productivity and increases heart attacks.

While medical research shows that that's true it's silly to cite it in this argument.This fact is better used to argue against shift work...particularly shifts at night.I know..I worked for 20 years in a hospital and my first job was on the night shift.Horrendous! But when I got onto the evening shift things improved and then my seniority allowed me to get the day shift and then all was well.

The clocks are changed one hour,twice a year.At worst that causes minimal disruption to sleep cycles...and only for a day or two after each change.

[Perdogg]

I don’t

[Alberta's Child]

I think time zones would be eliminated completely under "uniform time keeping" in this country. Just set a clock somewhere and base all of the business on that single clock. If you live on the west coast and start work an hour after sunrise in October and it happens to be 5:00 AM because the big clock in Washington or Nebraska says so, then who cares? Every business establishment and government office can set their own hours, based on the single "metric time" as you might call it. Seems to me this would make things pretty simple, right?

I suspect Daylight Savings Time was driven largely by the fact that after World War II, many of the nation's population centers lie in the easternmost areas of the time zones. I'd include New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington in the Eastern Time Zone and Chicago and St. Louis in the Central Time Zone. Because of this, people in those cities basically operate almost a full hour "later" than their counterparts in the western parts of the time zones. In other words, if I'm in central Indiana just east of the line between the two time zones and the sun officially rises at 6:00 AM one day, it's still 6:00 AM in New York City but the sun has been up for almost a full hour.

[trisham]

I do!

[hadaclueonce]

Anyone with a 24/7 operations, spend lots of money making sure their computer systems can handle the change.

But hey, we do it for the children.

/s

[fidelis]

"This is an excellent idea. Abolish 2 time zones and just have an Eastern and Western Time with the Mississippi River being the equilibrium."

I always know when a poster lives east of the Mississippi when he considers the the Mississippi River the "middle" of the country. From my vantage point, that's way back east. If dividing the country into two time zones, better to do so along the 100 latitude line-- right smack down the center.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

For those that love daylight savings time, lets just set and leave the clocks that way, year round.

The US is big enough to have the four time zones, leave that alone.

Setting the clocks forward and back twice a year is annoying and stupid. How many clocks do you have?

[canuck_conservative]

For people who work in an office, it means that during the winter months we can never be out in the light during the week. This is terrible for both mental and physical health.

So get a job working the afternoon shift - then you can have the whole morning to yourself.

Or move closer to the equator.

But if you live near the mid-latitudes (like most of North America and Europe), you must understand that there are fewer hours of daylight in winter than in summer. What're you gonna do, sue Nature?

[montanajoe]

I liked the days when it was a local option whether to have DST or not, and for how long.

Two time zones is ridiculous..shows a glaring lack of knowledge of geography/navigation.

[gura]

That makes WAAAY too much sense. Like having just one winter and summer blend of gas for the entire country.

[yarddog]

I have been surprised how many people don’t know that Florida, West of the Apalachicola River is on Central Time.

I have even had people argue with me.

[dfwgator]

Anyone who followed the 2000 Election would know that.