I just read an interesting article in Slate discussing the notion of moving the continental US to a single time zone. The article also suggests doing away with Daylight Savings Time.
This is interesting, and why shouldn't we do it? After all, China should have 5 time zones and they use a single zone, so wouldn't it work for us?
The article talks about TV schedule impacts, etc. but I've thought of a few other interesting challenges with this notion:
- Whose time zone would we pick? You just think political battles are messy now, wait til you have the populous states of California and New York battling it out over time zones!
- How would this impact air travel? I travel a lot and rely on the time zone differences across the US to get meetings in on the east coast and still make it home before everyone's asleep in Oregon. I also use redeye flights sometimes and count on my ability to "play the zones" to fit more in and minimize time away from home. This would put a crimp in that, for sure.
What do you think? I don't think this'll happen any time soon (if ever) but it's fun to ponder. So click on the image below to see the full text and ponder away...
I'd much rather the US move to the metric system.
