Another way to change time
Introduction.
It was William Willett [1] who was one of the first proponents of daylight saving time in the United Kingdom. In 1907 he published a pamphlet called The Waste of Daylight, in which he advocated moving the clocks forward at the beginning of the spring and summer months and returning to GMT in the fall. He wanted to encourage people to get out of bed earlier in the summer.
Willet's scheme required changing the clock by 20 minutes on each of four consecutive Sundays to minimize disruption to the biological clocks of humans or cows at the cost of remembering four separate clock changes for a total difference between summer and winter time of 80 minutes. A draft law was prepared in this sense. The UK House of Commons eventually rejected the bill.
The idea resurfaced during the First World War. In practice, summer time was first introduced during the First World War in 1916, immediately in a number of European countries. Daylight saving time was introduced by Germany, the United Kingdom, Austria-Hungary and some other European countries [2] .
The use and non-use of daylight saving time and winter time have changed many times in different countries of the world throughout history for various reasons. These changes have always had a number of supporters and opponents. Mostly it always was and still is a change of one full hour to optimize the use of daylight in the daily cycle of people. The time change is usually done all at once at night when economic activity is expected to be lowest. This is usually around two o'clock in the morning, one hour ahead on the designated day around the vernal equinox, and one hour back on the designated day after the autumnal equinox.
The designated days are chosen so that these time changes are followed by a day off from work, so that most people in society have at least a partial opportunity to cope with this sudden time change. Nevertheless, many people do not tolerate this sudden time change, and experts confirm the negative effects that sudden time changes have on human health. In transport, the timetables of the connections affected by the time change must be adjusted. Proponents and opponents of using daylight saving time and winter time cite a number of other advantages and disadvantages. Many articles have been written about it on the internet.
In 2018, the European Commission proposed a law to abolish seasonal time changes. However, the governments of European countries have not yet come to an agreement. It is up to the Member States to find a common position. [3]
DIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL 2000/84/EC of 19 January 2001 is still valid in the EU. [4]
How to get out of such a difficult situation?
Already in the first proposal, Mr. William Willett took care to minimize the disruption of the biological clocks of humans and, by extension, farm animals, but all the measures used throughout history have forgotten this.With today's rate of expansion and use of mobile and personal devices with automatic central time synchronization, it is possible to adjust the changes of winter time to summer time and back in such a way that there is no stress caused by a sudden time change. This can be achieved by establishing spring and autumn transitional periods.Around the vernal equinox, the sun rises about 2 minutes earlier each day in mid-latitudes. It's about 1 minute further south, about 3 minutes further north. During transition periods, the time is shifted in smaller time steps, of the order of minutes, for several days in a row, until the desired time shift is reached.
This preserves all the advantages of using daylight saving time and suppresses the negative effects on both traffic and human health in general, because the gradual changes in time during the transition periods will approximate the natural change of sunrise and will not disturb the internal biological clock. The advantage of more daylight before sunset remains. Most of the population hardly notices small time changes with automatic central time synchronization.
The exception remains mechanical and older chronometers without automatic time synchronization. During the transition period, time reporting media may publish notices of the need for minute time corrections for these chronometers.
It is technically possible to design all electrical and mechanical chronometers to advance time during the transition period according to a set scheme even without central synchronization. The respective manufacturers are certainly able to market. Sometimes you just need to upgrade the SW.
Traffic at night, affected by the time change in the transition period, only compensates for this change by correcting its average speed at the moments of small time increments. In this context, there is no need to change timetables. There is no need to designate different days each year to make the changes happen on the weekend.
Examples of possible implementation.
An example can be setting a transitional period from March 1 to March 30 with an increase of 2 minutes per day for the transition to summer time and from October 1 to October 30 with a decrease of 2 minutes per day for the transition to winter time.
In transport, if this is not prevented by technical or organizational reasons on the railway line, the delay can be compensated by a temporary change in the average speed.
If the delay cannot be compensated for technical or organizational reasons, the target delay of the affected train will remain only 2 minutes.
In the spring transition period, for example, a night train traveling at an average speed of around 50 km/h compensates for the delay during the 18.3 km journey by increasing the average speed by 10 percent to 55 km/h. Or a night train traveling at an average speed of around 100 km/h by increasing the average speed by 10 percent to 110 km/h will compensate for the delay during the 36.6 km journey.
If I walk at an average speed of 4 km/h, then by increasing my average walking speed by 10 percent to 4.4 km/h during a 1.5 km walk, I will catch up to my delay of 2 minutes.
In the autumn transitional period, trains will stop at the station for 2 minutes at the time of the time change.
Ilustration example of sunrise and sunset during transitional periods:
Conclusion.
There are a large number of articles on the Internet about this problem, but none of them look for a solution. During transitional periods, sunrise occurs at approximately the same time each day. The above proposal may seem like an interesting compromise solution for most supporters and opponents of seasonal time changes.
When the political representation in the EU Parliament decides to adjust the procedure of the transition between winter and summer time and vice versa in this way, it can be immediately, everything is ready. Please help pass this idea on to them.
author of the article: Ing. Josef Petera, Poděbrady, CZ 12/01/2023
Links:
[1] https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/science-and-technology/the-waste-of-daylight/
[2] https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_time#cite_note-%231-4
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_time_in_Europe
[4] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32000L0084