Maybe It’s Time To Get Rid of Time Zones

Published on October 30th, 2006

Would the United States be better off with only one time zone?

My annual inner monologue suggests two reasons to get up in the morning and go to bed at night: first, to enjoy the sunshine, and second, because that is what everybody else does. But what if the two imperatives collide? What matters more, waking up at the same time as everyone else or waking up with the sun? It might sound like a daft question, but not if you’re a Hong Kong-based journalist filing for a London-based newspaper or a financial analyst in Silicon Valley who needs to be awake when the market opens on Wall Street at 6.30 a.m. Pacific Time.

Rather depressingly, David Letterman outshines the sun in his effect on what people are doing. Push the television schedules an hour later and 5 percent of people will be watching television later—nearly a third of those actually watching the television. But if sunset is an hour later (because the individual is at the western end of a time zone), only half of 1 percent of people will watch later television. The effect also spills over onto sleeping patterns: The television, more than the sunrise, determines when people get up in the morning.

20 users responded in " Maybe It’s Time To Get Rid of Time Zones "

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# 1 rctaylor said, on October 30th, 2006 at 6:20 am

Millions of years of evolution has made us daytime critters. Our ancestors moving around at night usually became midnight snacks.
My Dad had to work three different shifts for over 30 years. They rotated every 6 weeks. Night shift wasn’t bad, but many people could never get use to the graveyard shift, roughly 12 to 7 AM. He would come home sleep about four hours and get up. He would take another nap before going in to work. We claimed he was use to it due to years in the Navy having to stand watches.

# 2 TheGiant said, on October 30th, 2006 at 6:47 am

I work with a guy here in the office that’s a loan originator and an IT person and he only gets 4 hours sleep at night period. He functions just fine because he’s used to it, that’s the way it’s been for years. He’s narcoleptic to boot.

# 3 Curt Fields said, on October 30th, 2006 at 6:56 am

It will never happen. Mothers want their children to go to school in the daylight. We tried to do this in the seventies but an army of mothers stopped us cold. The politions who started this said it was not their idea. Bunch of liars.

# 4 John said, on October 30th, 2006 at 7:55 am

There is a problem with going to a single time zone world-wide. As it is now the crazies who say “the world’s going to end at xx:xx on xx/xx/xxxx” you can say, well which “xx:xx xx/xx/xxxx” (what timezone…) go to one single time zone, you have one less way of defeating their claim, since there will only be one instance of that.
If we started to use GMT world wide, I would be fine, but rather than getting up at 6am, I would want to get up at 11am and have to be at work at 1:30pm instead of 8:30am

# 5 WokTiny said, on October 30th, 2006 at 8:03 am

I often think we should all use GMT, it would help a lot of record keeping and communication, but it would also blur some things…. suddenly “I had to get up at 4am” doesn’t get the same sympathy.

anyway, China has one time zone… seems they’ve managed.

just because clocks are sync’d doesn’t mean the whole world has to rise and set at the same clock time, we already don’t anyway…

# 6 Greg Allen said, on October 30th, 2006 at 8:08 am

I’ve had this same thought, myself. Why have time zones? I’m a ham radio geek and we don’t use them… we just use UTC.

There would probably be some sort of coordination to determine standard business hours in a given region but that wouldn’t be as hard has having 24 different times going on in the world.

# 7 Jim Scarborough said, on October 30th, 2006 at 8:16 am

I work with folks in India, and I’ve done some time zone work for a global shipping company. I think we really need to keep the time how it is because, even though globalization tends to push us towards GMT (or any other standard), the majority of our synchronized activities remain local. Imagine being a business traveler in a world that used GMT – rather than learning the local time, you’d have to learn the local customs. As tempting as it is to flatten the globe for timekeeping, we still live on a giant spinning marble.

# 8 John Paradox said, on October 30th, 2006 at 8:40 am

Has anyone thought how this would affect Sundials?

Each current Zone would have to have a different set of numbers..

Also, are there any wrist/pocket watches that have automatic reset for Daylight Saving Time? (not just top-end, but generic – I don’t wear a watch, and live in AZ, with no switch)

J/P=?

# 9 Olo Baggins of Bywater said, on October 30th, 2006 at 9:19 am

The goofballs in Indiana (my nearby neighbor to the south) just joined the rest of the western hemisphere in doing DST, and now someone proposes this? They currently have campaign ads ripping the governor for the “devastation caused by the time change,” so imagine…this could cause civil war in Indiana.

# 10 sirfelix said, on October 30th, 2006 at 10:28 am

If anyone could sit down with a caculator and add up the time, energy and money saved by getting rid of DST and Time Zones, it would baffle your mind.
Ask any IT network geek what DST does to his system twice a year, in many cases they need to shut them down to prevent cross time stamping of files, etc.

Most locals already work by a set schedule, meaning if the schools or your work want you to come in later or earlier then they will change your schedule. As it is now my wife has to go into work sometimes at 9 and other times at 8:30 or 10. So the schools can just change the time to come to school.

# 11 Mike Voice said, on October 30th, 2006 at 11:30 am

I am in favor of eliminating the use of DST, but I can’t imagine the US dropping the use of time-zones… heck, we can’t even stomach the switch to metric!

I can see using GMT to coordinate people’s activities across time-zones – scheduling a conference call, etc – but I don’t see the reasoning behind dropping use of time zones.

If I was going to change things, I would make the Date Line and the Time Line one-in-the-same.

Why do we have our time referenced to Greenwich, England, but have the date change in the middle of the Pacific Ocean??? WTF?

Who are the morons who agreed to that?

5 anyway, China has one time zone… seems they’ve managed.

Good point. I hadn’t heard that mentioned before.
http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/time-zone/asia/china/

Wouldn’t it be nice to fly from the Left Coast of the US to the Right, and not “lose” 3-hours. Or “gain” 3-hours on your return flight?

# 12 0113addiv said, on October 30th, 2006 at 11:49 am

We should slow down time. Instead of a 24 hour day, we should make a day 10 hours. That will stretch time 2.4 times what we now feel. Just imagine, you go in for a one hour (base 10–not base 24) massage and you’re on the table for a long nice time, like the way pleasurable things are supposed to be. Of course, politicians will take advantage of this by claiming that they increased the minimum wage to $10.00/hour ! (and of course, the masses will agree since they hardly ever know when they’re getting hood-winked).

# 13 0113addiv said, on October 30th, 2006 at 12:21 pm

sychronicity alert!: I’ve gotta run some telecom cabling so I wanted to measure the length of wiring needed. I figured I’d use my paces as a good measure because the length is very long. I took 10 paces and measured how many feet I covered… 24 feet! (i.e., every pace equals 2.4 feet which now makes it easy to measure long lengths). Ahh, synchronicity is everywhere!

# 14 Olo Baggins of Bywater said, on October 30th, 2006 at 12:46 pm

11…GMT was the center of the universe, and the IDL is where there’s nobody at all. At least, it was that way to the scientists who started it all, and who may have lived in Greenwich.

(Note: I did no fact checking before writing this.)

# 15 Chris Jennings said, on October 30th, 2006 at 2:27 pm

“Ask any IT network geek what DST does to his system twice a year, in many cases they need to shut them down to prevent cross time stamping of files, etc.”

If your IT people are using an operating system that doesn’t datestamp according to UTC and then adjust for regional timezones then you need to get a new Operating system. What the hell are you using??? DOS?

# 16 Michael P. O'Connor said, on October 30th, 2006 at 5:32 pm

As some one that does not own a car (by choice) having the light of the sun when I go to work is nice. Be it biking during the warmer months (only a 15 minute commute), or walking (50 minutes, still about 40 minutes less then most of my coworkers that drive to work), I only live 3.5 miles from work.

For the biking part, the drivers can not see me during the day, it will really not see me at night.

# 17 Calin said, on October 30th, 2006 at 6:10 pm

What the hell are you using??? DOS?

I just read an article that stated around 64% of U.S. businesses still have COBOL systems running their operations. So, a system that doesn’t automatically change for DST or set to GMT wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

# 18 tallwookie said, on October 30th, 2006 at 7:04 pm

I believe it was the fact that the railroad system was so influential/critical to the economy at the time when time zones were created – but the economy and the majority of the population doesnt directly rely on the railroad system for basic transportation or economical support – so timezones are a big waste of time.

The political parties should make THAT the issue to argue about, something that actually affects the majority of the populous.

# 19 Dr. Gonzo said, on October 31st, 2006 at 8:49 am

China does indeed have one time zone.

Geographically, time is a localized matter. “Noon” is when the sun is overhead.

DST is stupid. The entire idea of time zones was (and should be) that the center of the zone jibes with local noon at noon. Since the earth is 360 degrees around, dividing by 24 hours gives us zones 15 degrees wide. That made perfect sense; your clock time and locally apparant time were, no matter where you lived (other than arctic circles) within 30 minutes of each other.

Then GOVERNMENTS had to wade in and fuck everything up. The funny ones are the backwards third world places that didn’t even observe a one-hour interval and made their time zones 30 minute offsets. I think India is one such toilet. Many wristwatches that track multiple time zones can’t even digest a 30 minute offset.

# 20 SkyKing said, on October 13th, 2009 at 7:44 pm

Well, many good points raised above. D.S.T. has now been legislated to end AFTER Halloween. Thanks to the likes of Representative Markey of Mass., and Representative Upton of Michigan. Funny, they both live in the same time zone (Eastern), but their motivation to extend DST to 8 months a year from the original 6 months a year..represents flawed reasoning to me. Western Michigan should be on Central Time by the way, the state has no business being on Eastern. But I digress. The main purpose of extending DST to 8 months was to help conserve energy, according these legislators. Lights wouldn’t turn on until an hour later in the evening, so the reasoning goes. However, with the advent of CFL’s and now LED lighting…and the planned phase-out of incandescent lighting, this argument doesn’t cut it. Extended daylight into the evening helps commerce. Golf courses and driving ranges. Shopping at the malls. After school sport activities. The four U.S. time zones need to be re-aligned. And, DST should not be introduced until the first Saturday in May after the first Sunday in May.
Standard Time should return on the final Saturday in September. Otherwise, a more permanent solution is to keep our clocks on Standard Time all year round + a half hour. This solution would only work if the western borders of our time zones are moved east by about 125 nautical miles or further. This would stop the unusually late sunrises experienced in October and March, and also trim back post 9.30pm sunsets in states such as western Michigan, western N.D. and the like. The shifting of DST to 8 months a year was a mistake. Let’s go back to 5 months of D.S.T., and retain Standard time to a 7 month schedule.

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