Time to Rest

The Evansville Courier Press writes:

Federal government moves six area counties into Central zone. Our View: That was a good result; now let the issue cool.

I replied:

I have to agree with the Courier-Press on this one, although I'd love to see all of Indiana back in the central time zone again too.

The DOT's ruling actually says "Furthermore, DOT does not have a statewide proposal before it nor has the Indiana legislature endorsed such an approach. It is, therefore, beyond the scope of this proceeding to consider such a significant change to the State’s time zone boundaries."

http://dmses.dot.gov/docimages/pdf95/382609_web.pdf

The implication is that if the governor or the legislature had requested that the DOT consider a single time zone for all or most of Indiana, they would have considered it. Not only did the legislators not request such a consideration, they virtually ruled it out by requiring that the ten counties on year-round Chicago time stay on central time and that the five counties (illegally) observing year-round New York time stay on eastern.

http://www.in.gov/apps/lsa/session/billwatch/billinfo?year=2005&request=getBill&docno=127

Hoosiers certainly disagree on which time zone is better, but at least we can all look at the same facts and agree that we are effectively on winter daylight saving time and summer double daylight time in the eastern time zone. A couple of simple examples make this pretty clear.

U.S. Code shows that the design goal of the time zones is to evenly divide the winter sunlight between morning and evening as nearly as possible and to shift about 60 minutes from morning to evening during DST.

On January 26, Indianapolis has about ten hours of daylight. The nominal sunrise and sunset are easily seen to be 7:00 am and 5:00 pm -- five hours before midday and five hours after. On central time, sunrise is 6:58 and sunset is 4:57 -- within a couple of minutes of nominal. On eastern, sunrise is 7:58 and sunset is 5:57 -- 4 hours before midday and 6 hours after -- effectively DST in the middle of winter.

Correspondingly on August 8, Indianapolis gets 14 hours of sunlight. The nominal sunrise and sunset on DST are easily seen to be 6:00 am and 8:00 pm -- 6 hours before midday and 8 hours after. On central DST, sunrise and sunset would be 5:50 am and 7:50 pm -- within ten minutes of nominal DST. On eastern DST, sunrise and sunset are 6:50 am and 8:50 pm -- 5.2 hours before midday and 8.8 hours after -- effectively "double daylight time".

Bill Starr
Columbus, Indiana (Bartholomew County)
Tue, 24 Jan 2006, 11:54pm EST

Ref: http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/260.html { U.S. Code on time zones }


***** ORIGINAL ARTICLE *****
Time to Rest

The Issue: Federal government moves six area counties into Central zone. Our View: That was a good result; now let the issue cool.

January 22, 2006

From a strictly regional perspective, the great time-zone debate in Indiana turned out about as well as it could have for the southwest corner of the state.

The only way it could have been better would be for all of the state to go on Central time, but as we learned this past year, that is not going to happen any time soon. What did happen this past week is that the U.S. Department of Transportation agreed to allow Daviess, Dubois, Knox, Martin, Perry and Pike counties to move from the Eastern to the Central time zone, joining Vanderburgh, Warrick, Posey, Gibson and Spencer counties.

The common interest among those 11 counties has always been there. People cross county lines daily to work, conduct business, shop and dine, acquire services, go to school, and enjoy entertainment and recreation. But the time-zone differences made it a less than comfortable fit for half of the year. Because of differences with daylight-saving time and the time zones, the two groups of counties would be on the same time half the year and an hour apart half the year. But beginning April 2 of this year, they will all be on the same time, year around. It was a good result for the region.

But it didn't turn out so well in Northwest Indiana, where St. Joseph County, which wanted to move into the Central zone and on the same time as Chicago and the Gary area, was denied its request.

And we will have to see how it turns out for Gov. Mitch Daniels, who started it all with his push to put all of Indiana on daylight-saving time. He won that one, but with the agreement that he ask the federal government to hold hearings on possible time-zone changes. But instead of a process that looked at putting all or a large part of the state in the same time zone, the feds said they would consider requests, county by county. That upset folks who felt that daylight-saving time should not go forward without major time-zone changes.

And now some lawmakers who reluctantly supported Daniels' push for daylight-saving time will be sweating re-election this year. They, and Daniels, would prefer to put the issue behind them.

We share that view, though for a reason other than their political survival. Most of Indiana remains today in the Eastern time zone. Goodness knows why, but a lot of people in our Midwestern state prefer Eastern time.

Yet some lawmakers who are still upset with the time-zone outcome want to see a statewide referendum on whether all of Indiana would be in the Central or the Eastern time zone. Let's not risk it.

It would be great to see all of Indiana in the Central time zone, but not Eastern. Who wants it dark at 8 o'clock in the morning?

CourierPress: Editorials