My petition for Central time to Bartholomew County commissioners, 15 Aug 2005

The three commissioners of Bartholomew County, Indiana held a hearing for public comment on whether to request a hearing from the U.S. Department of Transportation for a possible change to the Central time zone. The hearing was held on Monday, 15 August 2005. The commissioners voted to stay in whichever time zone Indianapolis chooses, but stopped short of making any recommendation to Marion County of which zone they might prefer.

I realized that I had not posted the comments which I presented in my testimony at this hearing. They follow below.

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Thank you for scheduling this opportunity for Bartholomew County residents to express our time zone preference to you.

Now that the legislature and governor have passed the bill putting Indiana on daylight saving time, I prefer that as much of Indiana as possible observe Central time rather than Eastern.

The primary reason for my preference is based on our longitude and the natural time zone boundaries. The natural time zone boundaries are centered on even multiples of 15 degrees longitude around the globe, so that the clocks in every zone read approximately 12:00 when the sun passes overhead at noon. This natural Eastern zone is centered on 75 degrees and the Central zone is centered on 90, with the natural boundary between the two at 82.5 degrees. Based on our longitude, the whole state of Indiana, as well as half of Ohio and virtually all of Michigan and Kentucky fall within the natural boundaries of the Central time zone.

If Indiana remains in the Eastern zone, I understand that we would be the only state in the U.S. that lies completely within the mathematical boundaries of one time zone (Central) and yet observes a different time zone.

Normally, when a community is observing standard time in the winter, the sun would pass overhead within one half hour of 12:00 and when observing daylight saving time in the summer, the sun would pass overhead within one half hour of 1:00. If we are on Central time, this will be the case, but if we are Eastern, the sun will not be overhead until 1:50pm in the afternoon -- giving us effectively double daylight saving time. This would give us a sunset of 9:15pm in late June, with dusk not falling until 9:45pm or so. Conversely for portions of each month from October through January, on Eastern time the sun would not rise until after 8am, based on the expanded Daylight Saving Time period approved by Congress to begin in 2007.

Since Indiana lies well within the longitude range for Central time, we have effectively been observing Central daylight saving time year-round for the past several decades.

The argument may be made that Indiana borders more states that are in the ETZ than the CTZ. This assumption is only partially correct. Michigan, Ohio and part of Kentucky are in the ETZ. Illinois and the western part of Kentucky are in the CTZ. The border distance with states in the ETZ is approximately 400 miles and the CTZ is approximately 390 miles. A difference of only ten miles makes this argument nearly pointless. And, as I pointed out earlier, even those parts of Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky that currently observe eastern time where they border us actually fall within the Central time zone according to their longitude.

Another argument I have heard for Eastern time is that Indiana's time should match that of Washington, D.C., since that is where our legislators work. I don't give this argument much weight. Carried to its logical conclusion, our whole country would be on Eastern time, regardless of how much sense that made to the people of California, Alaska, or Hawaii. This is exactly the situation in Communist China, whose government imposes a single time on the whole country, although the country would fall into five time zones if they followed the natural lines of longitude.

Apparently the Department of Transportation does not give much weight to the common-sense arguments based on longitude, so let us switch to the business rationale for Central time.

The primary selling point that Governor Daniels made for Indiana's switch to daylight saving time was to put Indiana clocks in sync year-round with most of the rest of the United States. From this perspective, either Eastern or Central time would be fine -- we would still change our clocks with the rest of the country twice per year, and always be the same number of hours different from just about anywhere else in the U.S.

And the rest of the country is already accustomed to dealing with Indiana businesses on both Central and Eastern time for about six months of each year, so neither should require more of an adjustment for our business partners than the other.

One advantage to being on Central time year-round is that it would put all Indiana businesses at most two hours away from all our customers and suppliers in the continental U.S., rather than being up to three hours different from the rest of the country on Eastern time. This might serve to expand opportunities for business with those on the west coast, without harming our relations with those on the east coast, who are already accustomed to being one hour ahead of us half the year anyway.

Another argument for Central time is to align ourself most closely with the population center of the country. The mean center of population of the United States is in Missouri, and moving westward with every census.

If we change to Central time, we will continue to enjoy the same additional sunlight in the summer evenings -- about 1.5 hours more evening sun than morning sun each day on average, while gaining one hour additional morning sunlight during most of the school year.

If we stay on Eastern time next summer, our clocks will read between 1:40 and 1:50pm at local noon during this period, giving us about 3.5 hours more evening daylight than morning daylight per day on the average. Personally I would rather have more light in the winter mornings, without losing any of the abundance of summer evening light we already enjoy.