
Map of Proposed US Time Zone Changes - synack
https://www.worldtimezone.com/dst_news/dst_news_usa07.html
======
fencepost
The map visualization is pretty terrible, since the color codings between the
maps have different meanings - the first map shows what time zone states are
_in_ , the second map shows what time zones states will be in _if they 're
changing_. Having the second map show what the actual proposed final time zone
layouts would be would be much more useful.

It is interesting that Montana, Wyoming and Utah are (considering?) jumping
onto Central, with most other western states moving to Mountain (except
Nevada, which likely won't last long), but it's not clear from the map or
descriptions if they're jumping to CST or CSTCDT.

~~~
BorisMelnik
I really tried to remain objective and open minded, but this is pretty bad.
Not that this matters, but it also doesn't "match" the rest of the world, wich
pretty much have (somewhat) straight lines running down the center of the
globe.

~~~
chrismcb
Which world is this that has straight lines running down the globe? Time zones
are messed up all over the place. If all of these laws pan out, you will still
end up with rough bands. I think if a state doesn't change, but all of its
neighbors do, they will end up changing as well

~~~
nine_k
Look at the map of South Asia. It's plenty funny; e.g. the entire China is one
time zone.

~~~
a012
It's all about politics where timezones doesn't mean it must be matched with
geological.

------
Waterluvian
The geographer in me has a power fantasy where I draw vertical swaths and each
state gets the time zone their centroid lands in. And no more daylight saving
time.

Elect me as dictator and I'll solve the _important_ problems.

~~~
Klathmon
The insane software developer in me wants to just smear the time across the US
uniformly and do away with timezones all together.

The New Year's Eve celebration would be a wave of cheering across the US!

~~~
Waterluvian
No smearing. Just a single time worldwide. Let society adapt. I mean it's all
just semantics. Maybe you wake up at 11pm and go to bed at 3pm. Big deal!

~~~
LeoPanthera
"Who is this?"

"Hello Uncle Steve!"

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" Uncle Steve asks, sounding as if he is
still asleep.

"Of course I do, and so do you! It's 04:25 on Saturday... everywhere." I add a
dramatic emphasis to the last word.

"But do you know what 04:25 on Saturday signifies in Melbourne?"

"Breakfast time?"

I can actually hear him rubbing his eyes.

"We don't centre our waking/sleeping cycle on solar noon, fool nephew," Uncle
Steve explains. "We centre the school day on solar noon. In countries above
and below certain latitudes, where seasonal variation in the amount of
daylight is significant, it's important for there to be the maximum amount of
light when children are going to school in the morning, and coming home from
school in the afternoon. Here in Melbourne, solar noon is about 10:30 Standard
Time, so the average school day is timetabled from 07:00 to 14:00, and a
typical working day runs from about 07:00 to 15:00. That means that on a
working day, I get up at 05:00, at the earliest."

"Ooogh. Sorry. That's about two hours later than I reckoned," I tell him.

"I know," he replies.

"I didn't know you did that in Australia," I say. "That deliberate
misalignment of the diurnal routine. Does every country do it?"

"No. Equatorial countries don't, because they get plenty of light all year
round. Temperate countries do, though. The technical term for it is 'daylight
saving'."

I blink.

"And 05:00 is when I get up on a working day," Uncle Steve continues. "On
Saturdays, I like to lie in. Until solar noon, if possible. That's more than
five hours from now."

I'm beaten. "I guess I have no idea what 04:25 on Saturday signifies. It used
to be pretty universal, but now where I live it signifies a time to go out and
get drunk..."

"And where I live," Uncle Steve says, "it signifies a hangover."

"The same time of day on the same day of the week means many different things
to different people all over the world," I say. "Too many to remember them
all."

"Yeah," Uncle Steve grumbles. "It would be neat if there was a lookup table
for that kind of thing."

[https://qntm.org/abolish](https://qntm.org/abolish)

~~~
0-_-0
Let's invert the argument:

Before abolishing unified time

I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. What are the working hours there?
Google tells me it is currently 7:00 to 15:00 there. It's probably best not to
call right now.

After abolishing unified time

I want to call my Uncle Steve in Melbourne. When are the working hours there?
it's 8:00 to 16:00, same as it is here, of course! Same as it is in New York,
Bangalore and Hawaii, at the South Pole and on the Moon.

You get the point...

~~~
reallytho9
The difference is that as soon as you know what time it is in Melbourne, you
know if you can call Uncle Steve. Regardless, you have to know where the sun
is, because that determines whether or not Uncle Steve is awake (most likely).
But it’s much easier to find his timezone offset and figure that out than
figure out if the sun is up there (which incidentally, timezones actually
allow you to do).

It’s much easier if noon is noon around most of the world (obviously it gets
more meaningless the further north and south you get), as opposed to always
having the same time and having to figure out where the sun is.

This is why one world timezone is a terrible idea. It makes some calculations
simpler, but it otherwise royally fucks with how humans work, and humans are
much more concerned with where the sun is.

------
DoreenMichele
A little history:

Clocks used to be on local time. You typically had a town clock tower and noon
was when the sun was overhead.

Then we invented trains. We introduced standard time zones so you figure out
when the train would be at the station.

I'm not a fan of daylight savings time, but this proposed patchwork is
throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

~~~
noobiemcfoob
Then we invented everything else and along with that UTC. Which works until we
have colonies on another planet. We should go ahead and move to a galactic
time standard.

~~~
snarf21
We just need to bite the bullet and move everything to UTC. In the short term,
just post both EDT (e.g.) and UTC on websites and signs and then eventually
drop UTC. The math of knowing what time to call your uncle halfway around the
world doesn't change, you still know their normal day runs at an X hour
offset.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Knowing when to call a relative involves more than knowing their time zone. It
also involves knowing a bunch of other details about their life, like their
work schedule, if they have the kind of job where it is okay to call them at
work if you keep it brief (eg overnight security guard who walks around once
an hour and otherwise watches video feeds from cameras), whether they are a
morning person or a night person, what non work activities they regularly
attend (church, hobbies) and when they attend them, etc.

In practice, if you keep in touch on a regular basis, you don't actually need
to remember their time zone at all. You can remember the correct time to call
in relation to your own schedule: "Got to call Grandma as soon as I get home
from work. If I wait until after I eat dinner, she will be asleep."

In actual practice, that's how most people seem to handle long distance
relationships where they keep in touch regularly. (Or maybe that's just me.)

Plus, it's the relatively rare Luddite that you can only contact by phone
these days. A lot of people keep in touch with long distance relatives via
email, Facebook or text messages, all of which allow you to send the message
whenever you feel like it without worrying if the other party is currently
available for live interaction. If you can contact them via such a method, you
can arrange an appointment for a live discussion by asking them when they
would be available for such.

------
devy
I obviously didn't get the memo, neither did the proposed time zone map
mention about the reasons for changes. So here is the big question: why each
state are proposing their own time zone now? The proposed changes look like a
mess to be honest.

~~~
knz
Many States (or at least some legislators in those states) are pushing for
permanent DST because of the perceived benefits.

I live in the north and the concern about DST always makes me laugh - the
relationship between the time and diurnal patterns is meaningless up here for
at least a third of the year.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
What are the perceived benefits?

~~~
knz
People usually cite benefits to farmers, energy savings, declining
crime/traffic accidents, happiness due to more sunlight etc.

The first Google result for me implies that these are largely myths
([https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/03/05/the-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/03/05/the-5-reasons-
to-keep-daylight-saving-time-have-no-science-to-back-them-up/)).

~~~
amanaplanacanal
Another data point: Later sunsets lead to lost productivity, more obesity,
more diabetes, and more breast cancer. Probably due to fewer hours of sleep.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/04/19/how-
livin...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/04/19/how-living-wrong-
side-time-zone-can-be-hazardous-your-
health/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.14e8f21f9d50)

------
quickthrower2
Remember if you store local date times in your DB it may be hard or impossible
to get back the UTC later.

~~~
koliber
It should be possible in most practical situations. This is assuming you are
storing the timezone correctly. You can always look at the date component of
the timezone, look it up in a DB like the Olson DB to see what the UTC offset
was on that date, and then apply that offset to get the datetime in UTC.

There are a few relatively small periods in time when that mapping is not one-
to-one. Then it is not possible without additional information.

That being said, do everyone a solid and store your date times in the DB in
UTC, in a field type that explicitly supports date times with timezones.

~~~
jsjohnst
> field type that explicitly supports date times with timezones

So as a string then in MySQL? ;)

------
tedunangst
Using gray to indicate no change makes the second map practically impossible
to interpret.

~~~
deathanatos
I attempted to fill in the areas not making any changes with their original
zone: [https://i.imgur.com/ZJZwc46.png](https://i.imgur.com/ZJZwc46.png)

(I also made Eastern hues of purple, to clearly show they're separate. Same w/
HI/AK.)

Note El Paso becomes an isolated area of what was once America/Denver
(Mountain Time), but would probably become America/El_Paso.

I have no idea what is going on in Oklahoma in this map, and I didn't bother
to change it.

I honestly can't imagine that this would last very long; the remnants of ye
olde America/Chicago (which is gone, in the new) would probably join
America/Salt_Lake? (at which point it becomes America/Houston?) if you're
SD/NE/TX/LA. If you're KY/WI, I'd say join America/New_York and let IL/IN feel
like timezone weirdos, except IN is probably used to it[1].

America/Lewiston should just rock its new place of power.

Seriously people, this is why we can't have nice things. DST was a decent
compromise. I for one also don't want to do DST time year round, as one will
basically not see sunrise in the winter. Noon should be at _noon_ , modulo
_reasonable_ inaccuracies due to the need to have timezones, but this being
essentially a zone off bugs the purist in me.

But I also kinda like leap seconds, so I'm probably a weirdo.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Indiana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Indiana)

~~~
majewsky
One nitpick: tzdata timezones can never join. They can only split. If a place
were to join another place's timezone, it would break the representation of
historic timestamps.

------
moonka
Interesting that so much of the country seems dissatisfied with their current
time zone. Being in WA, I'm certainly hoping that it moves forward for us.

~~~
aiiane
The linked page is a bit misleading, because it's not necessarily so much that
people are dissatisfied with their current time zone as they are dissatisfied
with it _changing_ for half the year.

The linked page portrays it as e.g. CA moving to "MST" but that doesn't
actually accurately represent what's proposed, because the lack of a DST
switch is meaningfully different from just moving to the same timezone as
current Mountain time states.

~~~
rrix2
MST is Mountain Standard Time is UTC-7. California wants to change their
clocks such that their time is PDT, which is Pacific Daylight Time which is
UTC-7. Rather than have different colors for daylight times versus standard
times, they're effectively colored by UTC offset. This does not seem
misleading to me.

The page is trying to provide a visual for how "off" our maps and tzdata are
going to be if laws like these pass without a unified vision of the move. What
sort of reasonable thing is California and western Kansas being in the same
time zone but _not_ Utah?

EDIT: And after all that, there will still be states that will observe
daylight savings time.

~~~
aiiane
It would be more accurate if the left hand map had 2-color stripes to indicate
both the summer offset and the winter offset, e.g. if CA were striped blue and
red on the left, and solid red on the right.

------
abc617
All these separate proposals are a logical nightmare for truckers and people
who have to cross state lines. I've heard this proposal before, but seems way
simpler: 1) Abolish daylight savings and the 1 hour change and keep things the
way they are. So technically daylight savings is right now (from March-Oct).
Just keep it as it is this very second 2) Merge the Pacific time zone with
Mountain time zone. That way in the continental US we have 3 time zone:
Eastern, Central, and Mountain But I can't find the exact resource I got this
idea from, but I think this would minimize the headaches and gripes people
have.

~~~
CydeWeys
The continental US is actually wide enough across to necessitate five time
zones. The four we have now aren't good enough. Cutting down to three as you
suggest would exacerbate the problem.

~~~
souterrain
Well, barely though. Only a tiny fragment of Maine would be in AST using
standard 15° wide time zones, the boundary being 67.5° W.

~~~
CydeWeys
The overall point is that if 4 isn't quite enough, then 3 is definitely way
too few.

------
vermontdevil
Indiana needs to be in Central. It’s bloody dark here in the morning because
we are the same time zone as NYC etc. not to mention it’s bright till almost
10pm!

------
bgdnyxbjx
This is pretty dumb. In what world should Boston and New York City be in
different time zones? And Long Island in a different time zone than
Connecticut.

------
Urgo
Random thought after reading all the comments about abolishing all time zones
and switching to UTC only. The biggest complaint people would have is they
wouldn't know what time morning was for example. Morning would be 7am
somewhere but 7pm somewhere else. But we already have the same type of
situation with the seasons anyway. It's summer in the northern hemisphere
while its winter in the southern. We should have month zones if we wanted to
operate the same way.

So with that being said, I've always been a supporter of switching to DST only
and this proposal actually does push my state that way, but I think I actually
could support UTC only as well.

------
ulkesh
I know my opinion is unpopular, but I sure would love it if the world would
simply rid itself of timezones and stick to a singular time. Does it _really_
matter if it's broad daylight at 0200 Earth Standard Time? Circadian rhythms
aren't affected if people still go to sleep at night and wake up at day. It
standardizes time relativity on a single scale. And it saves us software
engineers a lot of headache.

~~~
pfranz
This link often gets posted to rebut proposals to abolish time zones:
[https://qntm.org/abolish](https://qntm.org/abolish)

~~~
david_ar
> Do normal humans publish "waking hours"? Not typically.

It would kind of be great if they did though, it's not necessarily the same
for everyone in the same geographic location.

~~~
wilg
You can do this in Google Calendar, so sort of.

------
thameera
Coming from a different part of the world, this proposed change was news to
me. Does anyone have a link to the actual proposal and reasoning?

~~~
macintux
Every change is independent. Each state makes its own rules (well, has the
freedom to decide what it wants, although there is apparently some federal
oversight).

~~~
mbreese
The only thing the state has control over is if it observes daylight savings
time. Changing to a different time zone requires the Dept. of Transportation
to approve of the change.

This is one of the things that makes this so complicated... most of the bills
are “asking” the state government to petition the federal government to make a
change. And it isn’t guaranteed that the DOT will approve the switch.

Even more complicated... the state can only control whether or not to observe
DST. It can’t control the start/stop of DST, so if California wants to always
be at UTC-7 (the current PDT), it couldn’t just decide to always be in PDT. It
would need to petition the DOT to be moved to MST and then to not observe DST.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_United_States)

~~~
gpvos
Good that there is some central control, because if this all passed it would
become a righteous mess.

------
gpvos
It's fascinating to see that almost everyone wants to move a zone eastward
(except Indiana, apparently the state with the smartest people). This is
similar to many of the original recent proposals for abolishing the twice-
yearly time change in Europe, where many countries wanted to stay with summer
time instead of going to permanent standard (or "winter") time. For most
countries, this would be bad, especially in winter, when children would have
to go to school in total darkness. Luckily in several European countries there
is some grass-roots activism now to move to standard time instead. (In fact, I
and many others think that France, the Benelux and certainly Spain should move
a time zone westward, _and_ move to permanent standard time.)

Russia moved to permanent summer time a few years ago, but it was a disaster
and they moved to permanent standard time a few years later.

~~~
artimaeis
Really depends where you are on the globe in terms of latitude. Russia is a
gargantuan country that currently spans 12 time zones, I don't think there's a
single solution that can cover it, especially given that the southernmost
portions of the country (mainland) are around 41° and the northernmost parts
are around 77°N.

I think the US tends to be much simpler in this regard (49°N-24°N - contiguous
states). It seems in much of the country you really do get a more optimized
time for sunrise/sunset if we all moved over 1 time zone:
[http://andywoodruff.com/blog/where-to-hate-daylight-
saving-t...](http://andywoodruff.com/blog/where-to-hate-daylight-saving-time-
and-where-to-love-it/)

~~~
gpvos
I think it's also dependent on whether you are a morning or an evening person.
I'm very much the latter, and if there was more sunlight early in the morning
I would better be able to get up and be on time at work with less stress. I
can continue as late as I want in the evening or night without outside light,
so I have little need for a later sunset.

------
new_realist
In the age of smart phones and smart watches, we have the ability to define
two dimensional time zones and skew the time each night by a minute or so, in
order to achieve the ultimate goal: the sun always rising at a constant time
(e.g. seven a.m.). That is how we evolved to live: human time, optimized for
our circadian rhythms.

~~~
Zanni
That's great for those of us who live in Hawaii, but we already skip Daylight
Savings Time. What about everyone who lives far enough from the equator that
the length of the day changes significantly through the seasons? You could
hold dawn to a constant time, with enough smartphone gymnastics, but not dusk.
How is your circadian rhythm going to cope with full daylight at midnight?

~~~
new_realist
For extreme locations, there are no perfect solutions, only improvements:
bedtime is also at the same time each day. No time scheme is going to
magically fix an unnatural habitat like a set of blackout blinds would.

~~~
tedunangst
Trying to schedule your day becomes challenging when there are only 3600
seconds between 7am and 7pm.

------
gumby
Why should the federal government regulate time zones? Why shouldn’t states do
as they will (as Arizona and even more extremely Indiana do)? Some states, or
portions of states, could go on 1/2 hour offsets if they are too far from
local noon (as other TZs do).

We all walk around with computers in our pockets that can manage it. I can see
there might have been a justification back when computation was difficult and
the government felt it had a stake in trains being built, but nowadays those
factors no longer apply.

~~~
0x5002
Purely from a technical perspective and ignoring the political implications, I
don't think that phones are helping all that much. I travel quite frequently
and work with a lot of people across the US (as well as Europe and India), who
also travel frequently.

I keep tab of who is - or might be - where on any given day, simply to be able
to coordinate schedules and not call folks who are in PST at 6am by accident
(or have people call me at 9pm).

A system for messengers (Skype, Slack, Teams, Text ...) where people could
share their current time zone would make my life so much easier sometimes.

~~~
andrewla
The last time I used Slack it had this feature, or something similar -- it
would warn you when you were sending a cross-timezone message.

~~~
Qub3d
It still does. Try using @channel in a big company-wide channel (never
actually do this BTW) -- it will tell you how many people and how many TZs
will get pinged.

------
tricolon
What I can't get over is how Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas would be
_ahead_ of Illinois. That's just confusing.

~~~
strange_quark
This map is wrong. Illinois is considering staying on DST year-round.
[http://ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=10100SB0533...](http://ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=10100SB0533sam001&GA=101&SessionId=108&DocTypeId=SB&LegID=116470&DocNum=0533&GAID=15&Session=)

------
icedchai
Some of this looks nonsensical. For example, Illinois. Do these states even
talk to each other?

------
tedunangst
I hope the DC, and only the DC, change to Atlantic time goes through for
maximum hilarity.

------
sys_64738
It seems New England is the group of state the furthest east that would
benefit from Atlantic Time. But why would VW and FL move? It seems like
there's no value there, or am I missing something?

~~~
mimixco
It's not really moving so much as staying on daylight savings year round.
"AST" is another way of saying EDT.

------
thetimbanks
This would be a disaster for people living in Kansas City. There is so much
cross state commuting going on that I wouldn't think this would ever pass.

------
Taniwha
The people who manage TV scheduling, especially from satellites are royally
screwed, I wonder if there are enough spare transponders to double up where
required

~~~
Izkata
And 10 years later, people ad-hoc invent a solution to the time zone problem:

"Let's meet at 3pm _Comedy Central_ time."

"Wait, I usually use _Discovery Channel_ time, when is that?"

~~~
Taniwha
there's all sorts of cultural stuff here - 'prime-time' on the broadcast
networks has traditionally been off by one hour from the coasts (local time) -
presumably originally to reduce the satellite demands when broadcasts first
went national

------
leemailll
this will make travel for long-distance extremely painful

------
SlowRobotAhead
Not only is this patchwork idea dumb, but many of these have already failed in
their legislative sessions.

------
todd8
I think we should try something simpler first, get rid of daylight savings
time.

~~~
magduf
That's exactly what this is all about. Many states want to have "permanent
Daylight Saving", which is the same thing as just jumping to the next timezone
to the east, and no longer observing DST.

------
chirau
You seriously could not find a color to separate the East and West Coast?

DOA for me. Confusing, especially since these are the hubs of most activity.
Now you diagram just makes it seem like they are in the same time zone.

Sorry, nice try, but it is a no for me.

------
fredgrott
Good..Indiana and IL finally on one time zone..yeah!

------
S_A_P
hoping the TX bill passes. I hate having jet lag every spring for a week.

------
doorty
Tldr; Allows California to set the standard time to year-round daylight saving
time if federal law authorizes the state to do so. Move from current PT
(pacific time zone) to MT (mountain time zone) year-round

------
halfway
Perhaps missing something obvious, but what's the advantage of having time
zones over everyone using UTC/GMT?

~~~
mimixco
Because it's weird for planning purposes. I'd be eating breakfast in a
"morning" hour in one country while someone else eats breakfast at a "night"
hour somewhere else. Just kinda goes against the grain.

~~~
ovao
Maybe, but breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the many other tweens and variations
are really just different words to describe meals. So let’s axe the
distinction between them and simply call them “meals”.

~~~
mimixco
A link above explains. You want to call your uncle in Australia. Is he awake?
(home from work?, etc). You can't tell because it's the same "time" here and
there but a very different part of his day.

~~~
ovao
To deduce whether your Australian uncle is likely at work, as an example, you
need to know A) his work schedule and B) the difference in time between his
and your locations.

If you’re both in the time zone, you need to know A) his work schedule. The
idea that a person’s workday might be 1 AM - 9 AM might be difficult to
comprehend, but only relative to our current understanding.

------
imoverclocked
Why do we even _have_ time zones? DST is a seriously broken concept but
timezones on their own are almost as bad. The worst part is that people don't
really understand how much simpler the world would be without timezones
altogether. Just use UTC or anything consistent across the board.

The disjointness of the proposed zones on this map proves the point that the
offsets are arbitrary. Why not lead internationally by example by uniformly
adopting a modern clock everywhere. Let's standardize time for the whole
country.

~~~
ycombobreaker
It's not other people failing to understand. We just disagree. A world without
timezones would not be simpler, it would just shift complexity around. Beyond
that, it is tilting at windmills to suggest this sort of international
coordination.

Theres no need for international "leadership" or guesswork here. China has
already adopted a single clock for the whole nation. Maybe somebody living
there can advise how a nation with such a wide longitudinal spread operates
with a single time reference.

~~~
imoverclocked
Can you be specific about what would be more complex without timezones?

~~~
ycombobreaker
sorry for the the delayed response, but people will always have a need to
communicate in terms at least approximating local solar time (e.g.
dawn/noon/dusk). right now everyone can use "time" for that. force everyone to
a global reference clock and they will just have to make up some new, local,
nonstandard concepts and terms to reflect what was once just "time".

