"Time" to Combat the Recession

One of my "old chestnut" ideas might make sense in this crazy recession-credit-crisis-housing-market-crash world.

For many years I've observed as Daylight Saving Time, or DST, has been adjusted and re-adjusted, always in an effort to extend sunshine a little more into the evenings. In the U.S., both DST and changes to time zones have always worked to move daylight from the early mornings to the evenings; over the years, portions of Eastern, Central and Mountain time have moved west to help accomplish this goal.

I've said often that it's time for the U.S. to adopt a three time zone system, which would provide a major westward push to our time zones and provide even more of the evening sunshine we all seem to crave. Such an idea would have significant energy saving and schedule efficiencies.

Frankly, we have too many time zones across the continental U.S. - four, when across a similar distance in Europe, there are only two. This plus the on/off DST changes make for a mess of transportation schedules (airline, train, etc.) and an annual ritual of complaints from Americans who have to change clocks. In my house, despite the recent trend to auto-change, there are still about a dozen stove, microwave, decorative and other clocks to change twice a year.

My grand idea: Push the Pacific time zone off into the ocean. Extend Eastern time a bit more west to encompass Alabama and more of Kentucky and Tennessee. Place Central time more westward, to encompass all of Colorado and New Mexico. Mountain time becomes the "western" time zone, from Utah all the way to the Pacific.

This alignment would optionally put Chicago into Eastern time and give that metro area significantly more daylight during the evening hours in the summer. Denver would get the same effect by moving that area from Mountain to Central time. And all the west coast cities would move from Pacific to Mountain time.

By placing the country under three instead of four time zones, transportation schedules would instantly become 25% easier to calculate throughout the year. And the movement of daylight into more productive evening hours would result in additional energy savings.

One could even make a case for eliminating DST completely under this scheme, possibly by advancing ET, CT and MT by half an hour and then just leaving clocks alone year-round. Several countries around the world operate on a half-hour adjusted time zone, so this idea has precedent.

There are also efficiencies from more often using state borders as time zone boundaries, instead of breaking portions of states into different time zones, as in the current scheme.

Will such an idea ever take hold? Possibly, especially under a "change" administration such as we'll have starting in January. In the immortal words of my dad: We'll see.