I hope you got to read the "part one" of this discussion from last December -- if not, here is the link so you can get the idea of where this idea is coming from.
In short, my point was that the Daylight Savings Time concept was unnecessary, and there was no need to change times twice a year with all the logistic challenges and emotional trauma. The issue, in my view, was that the time zones themselves had been drawn arbitrarily, and with no regard for the actual astronomy involved.
The solution, then, was and is simply to redraw the time zones, such that there are no areas where, on the shortest day of the year, the sun rises absurdly late or sets absurdly early. To do that, you identify the longitude lines (Pole to Pole) where, on that shortest day, the sunrise and sunset are most closely aligned to, say, a 7:00am to 5:00pm period, mapping to typical workdays.
Those longitude lines then become the center of each time zone, and you extend the time zone east and west of there to where the time zone borders are about halfway between those lines.
So, "part two."
In the previous piece, I explained the logic and threw out an example or two, but didn't map the whole country. I thought it a good idea to go ahead and finish the argument here in case, you know, an actual congressman with some authority reads this and thinks it's a good idea.
The site that I used before turned out not to be so great as far as placing the sunrise and sunset times, so I did a lot more research before this article. As it turns out, the astronomical center of what we would call the Eastern time zone is closer to Syracuse, NY than Worcester, MA. That means that those four longitude borders (the centers of the four time zones) would run vertically, roughly, through Syracuse, and then St. Louis, MO, Denver, CO, and Santa Maria, CA.
We understand that when you create new time zones, you can't just draw a vertical line through the country at the appropriate point to delimit the time zones. It makes far more sense to use existing logical demographic and political borders -- e.g., state borders -- to make it easier on the populations.
That, if you choose to use state borders wherever possible, would take the Eastern time zone from Maine over to Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and the Carolinas. Georgia actually should remain Eastern as well, while Florida could split as it does now, with the "panhandle" area west of the metropolitan Tallahassee area being in the Central time zone.
The newly defined Central time zone adds Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and the rest of Kentucky and Tennessee that weren't already in Central. The other big change is that while the zone's western border includes Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana, it ends there. The new Mountain time zone, centered east to west in Denver, would take in the Plains states -- the Dakotas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas, all moving from Central to Mountain.
Pacific time, in the new configuration, would have only Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and Idaho, with Arizona, Utah and Montana staying in Mountain time.
And here is the part that makes the most sense -- with the realigned time zones, there is no need to do Daylight Savings Time at all; there would just be "Time." No time changes, no disruption, no emotional trauma.
I urge anyone with influence to consider working on a formal proposal to implement a plan like this. I guarantee it would go over well, because it is the one plan that does what is needed.
Really.
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