Maybe we should leave clocks and time zones alone and just shift work, school, and service times by 30 minutes?

Alexander K.
WorldTimeZone.com 


-------- Original message --------
From: Doug Ewell via tz <tz@iana.org>
Date: 2/20/26 15:59 (GMT-05:00)
To: Brooks Harris <brooks@edlmax.com>, tz@iana.org
Subject: [tz] Re: Bill for "half-daylight time" proposed in US House

Brooks Harris wrote:

> "Permanent Standard Time" would be the least technically disruptive,
> most natural, and consistent with the vast majority of time zones
> which do not observe DST. However this also upsets the current status
> quo practices.

Permanent standard time is both your preference and mine, but polls consistently show it is not even the plurality preference in the US, let alone the majority preference. Permanent DST invariably leads in polls (but well under 50% of the total), followed by permanent standard time, then the status quo.

> Most people don't like DST, but they often don't like a change in
> tradition either.

Which partly explains the diversity of opinions.

> "Permanent DST" was tried in 1976 [recte: 1974] and reversed in eight
> months. I'm guessing any change would meet a similar fate.

I was there, and still remember (even at 33-some degrees north latitude) the unusually and disruptively late sunrises. It’s important to note that the main argument that succeeded in cancelling the year-round DST experiment was the deaths of eight children in Florida — Florida! — who were struck by cars while walking to school in the dark. Everyone who argues for permanent DST today either wasn’t there or has conveniently forgotten history.

Americans who argue for permanent DST tend not to commute to work during the affected morning hours, and tend not to have young children who walk to school during the affected hours, so the argument becomes “this would be good for ME; I don’t care what’s good for you.” Furthermore, they seem to have an unrealistic sense of how much evening daylight would be recovered. We all love 8:30 pm sunsets in early summer, but that is simply not going to happen in winter, unless one moves somewhere that is both near the equator and significantly skewed from sun time (say, Casablanca).

I don’t think the half-hour proposal is ideal. I think it has a better chance of being adopted than the others, while not being as bad as permanent DST.

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Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org