Sen. Greg Walker has introduced Senate Concurrent Resolution 46 which would petition the United States Department of Transportation to conduct hearings to put Indiana in the Central Time Zone. The petition would request that Central Time be the “default time zone” for the state but it would not prejudice the ability of eastern counties to petition to be put on eastern time.
The problems are familiar. Our state is, economically, torn between east and west. Some counties gravitate toward Chicago; some toward Cincinnati; some toward Louisville; and many are mainly concerned with being on the same time as adjacent counties. As much of the state as possible should be on the same time.
Geographically, Indiana is well within what should be the Central Time Zone. If one splits the globe into 24 equal, one hour time zones; the boundary between eastern and central time zone should be somewhere around Mansfield, Ohio. That’s approximately 250 miles to the east of where I live. I should probably be about 1/3 of the way into the Central Time Zone.
Personally, I guess I’ve made my peace with eastern time and Daylight Saving Time (which is much easier now that my kids are older and I’m not putting them to bed in broad daylight). What I would like is for the federal government to shorten the period of Daylight Saving Time and make it run from, say, equinox to equinox.
I grew up near Mansfield, Ohio. That was the big town where we could go to the movie theater. Circa mid 70’s.
Dump Daylight Savings, altogether. It was a truly bad idea that should die.
I agree. Dump DST.
Central time would put darkness, mid-winter, at about 4:30 PM. Not all that appealing.
You pick your poison in mid-winter. Isn’t that approximately what the sunset times look like on the east coast?
Sunset today in Philadelphia will be at 4:51 p.m., so, basically, yes.
Ah yes, but sunset for Indianapolis today is 5:36. So like Carla, I would much rather have sunlight until 5:36 being on the western end of a time zone than 4:36 on the eastern end of a time zone. That’s just me, though.
Bradley, living on the west end of an eastern time zone gives light for the end of the workday and the commute.
I know, that’s why I’m agreeing with you. I’d rather have light after work than before it and hope we stay on Eastern.
O.K., then leave it on Eastern Time, year round.
The time zone is certainly important, but it’s more important to stop the lunacy of clock-switching.
Sunset in Philadelphia today is 4:51 p.m., so, basically, yes.
I’m in central now and if this is how everyone else does it then as far as I’m concerned, Indiana was right and everyone else is wrong. It starts to get dark around 4 in mid December in Tell City, and is midnight-black before five. It sucks.
They’re two issues – DST and what time zone Indiana should be on.
I’m all for dumping DST, but we should be on either CDT or CST.
I’ll give you whatever time zone you want, as long as we dump DST.
Note, however, that the Chicago part of Indiana will never be on the same time as the Louisville part of Indiana, unless Louisville aligns with Chicago.
I totally disagree with your line of reasoning here, Freedom. The tail gets to wag the dog. Chicago is a more important city than Louisville, but Louisville is allowed to drag 80 per cent of Indiana into the Eastern zone.
I don’t understand either why it would be such a disaster to put the Louisville suburbs into the Central zone. My sister resided in South Bend and crossed the time line every day to work in LaPorte. She could live with it.
Rick, I’d prefer to put things right back where they were under Frank, who I considered a pretty good Governor. Let Louisville metro do its thing. Let Chicago metro do likewise, and let Cincy metro go its own way. Let the body of the state stand pat.
I thought Indiana had it right, pre-Mitch.
My feelings are similar to yours, Freedom. The business community, however, is not going to let us go back.
If you don’t like the way things are, the only realistic alternative is a time zone change.
The business community was goaded by Mitch into claiming that DST would have economic benefits. Once instituted, the business community was asked to detail the economic benefits of DST and has been continuously silent.
Arizona outperforms Indiana, and it doesn’t have DST.
I agree with you Doug. Why not go back to the OLD dates for Daylight Saving Time? (Early April to late October) The new schedule doesn’t save any energy, and the new earlier “spring forward” date takes us from light mornings to mornings that are as dark as they are in January again. DST’s morning dark was aggravated when the start time for DST was moved from early April to early March. The difference is palpable.
@SM The dates for daylight saving time are set by the federal government, and is something that cannot be modified by the States. The States do not have the choice to choose what months they want, that is decided at the federal level. States can either go with DST or don’t, and States can pick a time zone. The feds choose the timeframe.