With all the hubbub about time zones, I thought I would offer an alternative.

We've lived under the Standard/Daylight model as long as most of us have been alive. It's frustrating. For nine months a year things are fine. Then just when it gets dark out, BANG, it gets darker. Half a century ago we tried permanent Daylight Savings Time. It lasted nine weeks before people cried uncle. It ran from 1 January 1974 until March. They repealed it before it started again in the fall.

Why is this a problem? When time zones were created over 150 years ago, every town kept its own time. That frustrated train timetables. Keeping everyone on the same hour was fine because it was close enough. But on either edge of a zone, it gets frustrating. Too much light, or too much dark. The world was carved into twenty-four 15° zones. Why are we using a model built for 1883 and not for how people live and work today?

I propose a different model. Adopt 7.5° / 30-minute time zones. Standard and Daylight stop mattering as much.

To show what this might look like, I made the map below. I broke the US into several 7.5° zones, using counties as the atomic unit so the smallest political entity never splits. Then I consolidated so whole states share a zone. The "whole state" rule matters because polling places need the same closing time.

That logic broke in a few places. The exceptions: Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Montana, Nevada, Tennessee, and Texas. Of the lower 48, only Texas straddles three zones.

Three metropolitan areas sat on dividing lines: New York City, Chicago-Milwaukee, and Kansas City. I shifted Connecticut counties to share New York's zone and northwest Indiana counties to share Chicago's. So little of Kansas commutes to Missouri that I left those counties in the Kansas zone.

Look at the map. Tell me where I got it wrong.

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Ben 
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