Let’s stop wasting time on the Daylight Saving Time debate 

Standard Time will end at 2AM on March 10, 2024, beginning nearly eight months of Daylight Saving Time. This pushes clocks forward by one hour in most states, providing more light in the evening hours and less light in the early morning hours. This time clock shift is felt most abruptly in the states located in the northern part of the country. 

For example, around the vernal equinox on March 19, 2024, the daily change in light in Fairbanks, Alaska, is around 400 seconds. In contrast, in Miami, Fla., that daily change is around 90 seconds. This means that in just nine days, the daylight in Fairbanks increases by one hour, while it takes Miami around 40 days to see such an effect. 

Whether the nation should use either Standard Time or Daylight Saving Time has been debated ever since the Uniform Time Act of 1966 became law. Tweaks to this law have gradually added more time to Daylight Saving Time, now nearly eight months, suggesting that politicians prefer it over Standard Time. 

Yet the Daylight Saving Time experiment in 1974, making the time change permanent, was considered a failure. The primary criticism was children walking to school or catching their bus in the early morning dark. The planned two-year experiment was abruptly cut short due to its unpopularity. 

At present, 19 states have enacted laws that can make Daylight Saving Time permanent if Congress acted, while nine state are considering legislation that would make Standard Time permanent. Clearly, there is no consensus from state to state on the preferred time policy. 

Overcoming inertia requires change, and change is hard. The likelihood that any federal law can be passed to either end Daylight Saving Time or make it year-round is wishful thinking. The 118^th Congress has been particularly bad in enacting bills into law, further pushing the issue onto the back burners. 

Sen. Mario Rubio (Fla.) has been persistent in hoping to make Daylight Saving Time permanent. He put forward the Sunshine Protection Act of 2023, which continues to languish in both the House and the Senate. This ensures that clock changes are certain to continue well beyond 2024. Using political capital to address the issue, when more serious national problems require attention, will guarantee the status quo. 

The idea of a permanent 30-minute shift has been proposed. This would eliminate clock changes, while providing a compromise between Daylight Saving Time and Standard Time. 

Given the current political environment, it would take a cataclysmic shift in thinking and bold action to eliminate the twice per year clock change. So what may need to happen to effect such a change? 

The governors of all the states could come together to agree on either Daylight Saving Time, Standard Time, or a 30-minute compromise time. Through the National Governors Association, these state executives have the unique power to put through such a recommendation. If some agreement can be reached there, it would put ample pressure on Congress to act. 

A smaller morsel to digest may be to follow the lead of how Arizona manages its time change, or lack thereof, by allowing states in different regions to work together to decide how they want to set their clocks. For example, the six New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts) can form a time consortium and decide how they want to address the situation. A balance between region size and ease of consensus must be weighed when forming such consortiums.  

The key point is that instead of getting the 48 states in the continental U.S. to agree on a single time policy, having states work together in their immediate geographic region may be more feasible. This would permit both Alaska and Hawaii (they already do not observe Daylight Saving Time) to act as independents. 

No matter what solutions are proposed and enacted, they should all include a “sunset clause” that would require congressional action to continue the law. This makes any such law a trial rather than a firm commitment. 

Much like how trying to eat an entire turkey in one gulp is unpalatable, the same can be said about resolving the Daylight Saving Time / Standard Time conundrum. Polls suggest that over 60 percent of people would like to end biannual clock changes. Using alternative pathways that make it easier for Congress to act makes sense and would be quite, shall we say, timely. 

Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is a professor in computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. A data scientist, he applies his expertise in data-driven risk-based decision-making to evaluate and inform public policy.