Timely Questions

1. Why don't we have Daylight Savings year-round? 

2. What would happen if the continental U.S. had only one time zone, instead of four? 

QUESTION #1 Using rough data for Greenwich, England, here's what daylight would look like:

WITHOUT DST:
Winter 8am - 4pm
Summer 4am - 8pm 

WITH DST:
Winter 9am - 5pm
Summer 5am - 9pm 

In italics, is the current system, no DST in the winter, DST in the summer. In summer it makes sense because losing the hour of daylight from 4am to 5pm is small potatoes, compared to gaining a valuable hour of daylight from 8pm to 9pm. In the winter though, would we rather have daylight from 8am to 9am, when people are driving to work, or from 4pm to 5pm, when people are driving home?

 
I'd say it's a toss up, but personally, I don't think it's worth the switch off of DST, just to move it up. That would in effect make the East Coast UTC-4 all year, and Central UTC-5...etc. 

QUESTION #2 Are time zones worth it? 

Let's look at the possibilities for the new American Standard Time (AST). 

Here's the best case scenario:

National Time of UTC-6 on December 1st
New York: 6am - 3:30pm
Chicago: 7am - 4:20pm
LA: 8:40am - 6:45pm

National Time of UTC-5 on June 1st
New York: 4:30am - 7:20pm
Chicago: 5:30am - 8:20pm
LA: 7:43am - 10pm 

Here's the deal with time zones: sunrises and sunsets are local events. But other events: sports, TV shows, everything else really, is happening at the same instant, no matter where you are. Does it makes sense to say that a basketball game is tipping off at 7:15 in New York, and only 6:15 in Chicago? No. It's not worth it for the business confusion, flight times, and everything else. Ironically, this was the best case scenario for summer and winter nationally, and this happens to be central time with daylight savings. So Chicago won't have to do anything different. I think we could either get rid of Daylight Saving Time or get rid of American time zones, but not both.