Bill for "half-daylight time" proposed in US House
With the annual clock changes soon approaching, we are well-accustomed by now to discussion picking back up around the typical proposals for "permanent daylight time" and "permanent standard time". But an alternative proposal of "permanent half-daylight time" has now been put forth in the US House of Representatives. For example, "Eastern time would then be 4.5 hours behind UTC, instead of five." Republican representative Greg Steube, who represents the Sarasota area in southwest Florida's 17th district, introduced HR 7378 (the "Daylight Act of 2026") on 4 February 2026. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce but, like most such proposals, has not yet moved forward. As presently drafted, the bill provides that the changes would take effect only 90 days after enactment. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/02/19/daylight-act-of-2026-p... https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7378/text https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hr7378/BILLS-119hr7378ih.pdf -- Tim Parenti
Nice to see a time zone post on this list. ;) I actually don’t think this is a bad idea. It satisfies the desire of most Americans to stop changing the clocks, and it strikes a balance between people who want more evening daylight in winter and those like me who don't want absurdly late sunrises in winter, which is the source of greatest conflict in the US. It might be the only proposal that has a chance of success. The half-hour offsets would be a bit of a mental adjustment, but we’d adapt; something like 20 percent of the world’s population seems to get along with them today. The proposed 90-day window, of course, is a horrible idea. Steube and others who support that part of the bill have absolutely no idea of the chaos this would cause. The right approach would be to spring forward as usual two weeks from now, then fall back on November 1 as planned, and then spring forward half an hour on March 14, 2027 and leave it there. -- Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org
On 2026-02-20 02:11 PM, Doug Ewell via tz wrote:
Nice to see a time zone post on this list. ;)
I actually don’t think this is a bad idea. It satisfies the desire of most Americans to stop changing the clocks, and it strikes a balance between people who want more evening daylight in winter and those like me who don't want absurdly late sunrises in winter, which is the source of greatest conflict in the US. It might be the only proposal that has a chance of success.
The half-hour offsets would be a bit of a mental adjustment, but we’d adapt; something like 20 percent of the world’s population seems to get along with them today.
The proposed 90-day window, of course, is a horrible idea. Steube and others who support that part of the bill have absolutely no idea of the chaos this would cause. The right approach would be to spring forward as usual two weeks from now, then fall back on November 1 as planned, and then spring forward half an hour on March 14, 2027 and leave it there.
-- Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org
I think this would be very disruptive. Only Lord Howe Island has done anything like that for decades. "Permanent DST" is also problematic. As Paul Eggert pointed out on the list: Re: [tz] Tzdb and the Sunshine Protection Act, 2023-03-02 ------------------------ On 3/2/23 14:22, Brooks Harris via tz wrote:
How will tzdb manage this?
Traditionally we've treated "permanent daylight saving" as standard time, and I'd rather continue this tradition than make an exception for the US. That is, tm_isdst would be 0. (Most people don't care about the tm_isdst flag, but POSIX and C standard nerds do.) Whether the adjusted time in (say) New York would be abbreviated "EST" or "AST" or "EDT" is up to common practice. We could use the abbreviation "-04" until common practice settles down. If common practice becomes "ET" we couldn't use that, unfortunately, as POSIX requires at least three characters. At some point "EST" might become the best of the alternatives. My biggest worry is the set of backward compatibility zones EST5EDT, CST6CDT, MST7MDT, PST8PDT as their continued use would lead to so much confusion that they'd be more trouble than they're worth. Presumably we would retire them by moving them to "backzone". "EST" and "MST" might need to retire as well. (Luckily, there is no "CST" or "PST".) Similar issues will come up if EU regions go to "permanent daylight saving", as they have threatened to do for years. Whatever we do in this area, it will be a mess. ------------------------ A "mess" doesn't sound so good. "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. Most people don't like DST, but they often don't like a change in tradition either. "Permanent DST" was tried in 1976 and reversed in eight months. I'm guessing any change would meet a similar fate. -Brooks
I like the idea, and Canada will also typically follow the USA on this if its implemented. Canada, of course, is familiar with 30 min offsets, as Newfoundland already has one, and its not disruptive. Maybe if we all move forward 30 minutes, Newfoundland time will now be the more 'normal' one. On 2026-02-20 15:07, Brooks Harris via tz wrote:
On 2026-02-20 02:11 PM, Doug Ewell via tz wrote:
Nice to see a time zone post on this list. ;)
I actually don’t think this is a bad idea. It satisfies the desire of most Americans to stop changing the clocks, and it strikes a balance between people who want more evening daylight in winter and those like me who don't want absurdly late sunrises in winter, which is the source of greatest conflict in the US. It might be the only proposal that has a chance of success.
The half-hour offsets would be a bit of a mental adjustment, but we’d adapt; something like 20 percent of the world’s population seems to get along with them today.
The proposed 90-day window, of course, is a horrible idea. Steube and others who support that part of the bill have absolutely no idea of the chaos this would cause. The right approach would be to spring forward as usual two weeks from now, then fall back on November 1 as planned, and then spring forward half an hour on March 14, 2027 and leave it there.
-- Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org
I think this would be very disruptive. Only Lord Howe Island has done anything like that for decades. "Permanent DST" is also problematic.
As Paul Eggert pointed out on the list: Re: [tz] Tzdb and the Sunshine Protection Act, 2023-03-02
------------------------ On 3/2/23 14:22, Brooks Harris via tz wrote:
How will tzdb manage this?
Traditionally we've treated "permanent daylight saving" as standard time, and I'd rather continue this tradition than make an exception for the US. That is, tm_isdst would be 0. (Most people don't care about the tm_isdst flag, but POSIX and C standard nerds do.)
Whether the adjusted time in (say) New York would be abbreviated "EST" or "AST" or "EDT" is up to common practice. We could use the abbreviation "-04" until common practice settles down. If common practice becomes "ET" we couldn't use that, unfortunately, as POSIX requires at least three characters. At some point "EST" might become the best of the alternatives.
My biggest worry is the set of backward compatibility zones EST5EDT, CST6CDT, MST7MDT, PST8PDT as their continued use would lead to so much confusion that they'd be more trouble than they're worth. Presumably we would retire them by moving them to "backzone". "EST" and "MST" might need to retire as well. (Luckily, there is no "CST" or "PST".)
Similar issues will come up if EU regions go to "permanent daylight saving", as they have threatened to do for years.
Whatever we do in this area, it will be a mess. ------------------------
A "mess" doesn't sound so good.
"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. Most people don't like DST, but they often don't like a change in tradition either.
"Permanent DST" was tried in 1976 and reversed in eight months. I'm guessing any change would meet a similar fate.
-Brooks
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. -- Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org
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.--Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org
<<On Fri, 20 Feb 2026 17:21:12 -0500, World Time Zone via tz <tz@iana.org> said:
Maybe we should leave clocks and time zones alone and just shift work, school, and service times by 30 minutes?
It's much easier to change clocks than it is to change all the laws, regulations, and contracts. Effectively that's what all of standardized time is, at the government level: a rule that tells officials and courts how to interpret a time given in a statute or other legal document. These could be written with respect to UTC, or to local sunrise and sunset, but rarely are as that would be an even greater inconvenience for most people than having to adjust the dwindling number of clocks that don't change automatically. -GAWollman
On 2026-02-20 13:58, Doug Ewell via tz wrote:
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.
Even at 51N 114W +1km we have parents complaining about how difficult it is to gets kids to sleep in summer, as at this latitude we get 18 hours daylight aroundt midsummer so do not benefit from DST. We would benefit more from moving a zone or a half west, as our boundaries are 110-120W/7:20-8:00: the centre is denser and urban, the east is rural, the west is mountainous and less populated. -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada La perfection est atteinte Perfection is achieved non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter not when there is no more to add mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retrancher but when there is no more to cut -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
One thing I don't see in any of these proposals: simply _adjusting the boundaries._ In the US, and I would expect in Canada also, states and provinces are free to divide themselves between time zones. So if Chicago wants to try "permanent DST," we could simply move to America/New_York and see how we like it. (Probably not much.) Or more realistically, if western Michigan doesn't like 8am sunrises for 3 months of the year, they can switch to Central Time. David Braverman
On Fri, 20 Feb 2026 at 15:07, Brooks Harris via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
As Paul Eggert pointed out on the list: Re: [tz] Tzdb and the Sunshine Protection Act, 2023-03-02 … My biggest worry is the set of backward compatibility zones EST5EDT, CST6CDT, MST7MDT, PST8PDT as their continued use would lead to so much confusion that they'd be more trouble than they're worth.
That certainly would remain a general concern for this project and the software ecosystem. But "half-daylight time" would additionally break a lot of viable workarounds for other devices: In particular, radio-controlled clocks sold in the continental US which obtain UTC-timestamped signals from WWVB are generally configurable to a narrow range of integer offsets from UTC, and DST observance can usually be disabled on most such devices. Some may include −4 for AST which would help residents in a permanent EDT situation, but in general no available setting would accommodate "half-daylight zones" like −4½, −5½, etc. On Fri, 20 Feb 2026 at 22:09, David Braverman via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
One thing I don't see in any of these proposals: simply _adjusting the boundaries._ In the US, and I would expect in Canada also, states and provinces are free to divide themselves between time zones.
Unlike in Canada, where timezones are strictly a provincial or territorial matter, US states are NOT actually free to self-select their timezones. Either the US Department of Transportation can change boundaries (in response to proposals from state/local governments) or Congress can legislate new boundaries. (States' only real say in the matter relates to opting out of DST observance, and even that is a bit specific in how exactly it can be done.) Since "permanent standard time" is equivalent to "permanent daylight time in the next zone westward", I do suspect that such shifts could likely gain more public acceptance if accompanied by thoughtful boundary adjustments, though bringing dividing lines through new areas brings about its own issues. -- Tim Parenti
On 2026-02-20 20:09, David Braverman via tz wrote:
One thing I don't see in any of these proposals: simply _adjusting the boundaries._ In the US, and I would expect in Canada also, states and provinces are free to divide themselves between time zones.
So if Chicago wants to try "permanent DST," we could simply move to America/New_York and see how we like it. (Probably not much.) Or more realistically, if western Michigan doesn't like 8am sunrises for 3 months of the year, they can switch to Central Time.
Some Canadian politicians have presented Private Members' Bills (unofficial legislative changes) asking these questions and they have either been dropped from or defeated in their respective legislatures. Most Canadian provincial or territorial governments would want to add a referendum question to the next general election of municipal or provincial representatives, before presenting any legislative bills. In 1921 50.24% of (38.73% of registered) voters in this province elected to retain the switch from and to MST rather than make MDT permanent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Alberta_referendum#Daylight_Saving_Time_3 Note that ~50k/1M ballots had no clear answer, about half of those with no answer given (blank ballot), and the other half of those with no *clear* answer given or some other (amused, facetious, amusing, sarcastic, enraged for various or multiple reasons) comment written on the (rejected) ballot. -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada La perfection est atteinte Perfection is achieved non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter not when there is no more to add mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retrancher but when there is no more to cut -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The lesson which people *did* draw from those deaths is to not let children walk to school any more. Like, at all.
On 2026-02-24 14:16, Matthias U via tz wrote:
The lesson which people *did* draw from those deaths is to not let children walk to school any more. Like, at all.
Our local school board once again seems to have reduced the cost, need, and eligibility for transport provided to school, by increasing the distance children may be required to walk (probably by direct map measurement from home to school premises, rather than say wayfinding distance on foot, taking into account crossings and availability and lighting of any pedestrian paths. [Of course, kids in rural areas have it worse, most having to travel relatively long distances and times, with home access across terrain which may harbour predators, their only defense being a cap gun, similar to those which older readers may have played with before that was deemed an inappropriate toy: not so much here, away from downtown areas, and with live and let live animal control rules.] -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada La perfection est atteinte Perfection is achieved non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter not when there is no more to add mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retrancher but when there is no more to cut -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
participants (9)
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Brian Inglis -
Brooks Harris -
David Braverman -
David Patte -
Doug Ewell -
Garrett Wollman -
matthias＠urlichs.de -
Tim Parenti -
World Time Zone