The dreaded British Summer Time (BST) change coming again - what happens to trains and connections running at that time?

[AM9]

It already observes a different time zone for half the year. Just because GMT is historically based around the time in Greenwich doesn't mean it necessarily has to do so forever.

Greenwich Mean Time is an obsolete term anyway.

 

[johncrossley]

There's nothing to stop Scotland moving the normal working day and other affected activities to UCT (as happens now). The only significant impact would be with cross-boundary activities such as some train journeys and large organsiations with locations either side of the border.

Moving the normal working day seems to be (bizarrely) unacceptable in general, hence artificially fiddling with the clocks instead.

 

[skyhigh]

If we, the UK, moves to GMT all year round, people may compensate for making the office hour 8 - 16 in summer, and 9 - 17 in the winter, and government offices, schools, and railways may standardise the "schedule change" to be at Easter holiday and October half-term.

So instead of keeping everything we do at the same time and changing the clocks twice a year, you think it'll be much easier keeping the clocks the same and changing the time we do things twice a year...?

 

[yorksrob]

The accident and injury statistics are somewhat moot, since significant road safety measures were implemented at the same time - notably in 1967 drink-driving laws, and in 1968 compulsory fitting of front seat belts to all post-1965 cars.

The unpopularity was much more widespread - the legislation to repeal Standard time was passed by 366 to 81, which hardly suggests that only Scotland and Northern Ireland were against:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Summer_Time

Well, people were strange in the 60's, hence Beeching.

 

[Royston Vasey]

The Chinese solution has been to use a single time zone without daylight savings for a country 5250 km wide, somewhat wider than the USA which uses four time zones.

 

[nlogax]

The Chinese solution has been to use a single time zone without daylight savings for a country 5250 km wide, somewhat wider than the USA which uses four time zones.

Something which on the surface seems to work, yet scratch a little beneath and pockets of 'local time' exist. Beijing Standard Time is roundly ignored in those areas.

 

[duncanp]

Something which on the surface seems to work, yet scratch a little beneath and pockets of 'local time' exist. Beijing Standard Time is roundly ignored in those areas.

If you had one time zone across the whole of a country such as the United States, then the controversy would shift as to when sunrise and sunset should be.

Eg. Seattle on the West Coast is three hours behind New York on the East Coast.

So if sunrise is at 06:00 in New York, it would be at 03:00 in Seattle.

Similiarly if sunset is at 22:00 in New York it would be at 19:00 in Seattle.

People on the West Coast of the United States wouldn't be happy if they had to endure dark evenings just to suit people in New York or Washington.

And all of this doesn't take into account Hawaii, which is 3 hours behind Seattle.

I travelled on The Canadian from Vancouver to Toronto, and this train crossed several time zones. At the first station in the new time zones there would be an announcement over the tannoy that we are now in a new time zone, and please move your watches forward.

Many electronic devices these days have a setting which allows the time to update automatically, thus getting rid of some of the hassle.

I don't think there is a solution to the daylight saving issue that keeps everyone happy.

 

[nlogax]

I don't think there is a solution to the daylight saving issue that keeps everyone happy.

Well, quite. The state of Indiana neatly represents why a one-size-fits-all policy just wouldn't work. In of itself it can't decide whether it wants to be Eastern or Central so certain counties go their own way and there's been a lot of flipflopping over the years.

I don't see any solution to the current situation. One of part of the UK will always have to make sacrifices. Unless we want to consider timezone changes at the Scottish border?

 

[Geezertronic]

To be honest I had forgotten about the clock changes until I looked at the kitchen clock Sunday evening and noticed it was an hour out

 

[AM9]

Well, quite. The state of Indiana neatly represents why a one-size-fits-all policy just wouldn't work. In of itself it can't decide whether it wants to be Eastern or Central so certain counties go their own way and there's been a lot of flipflopping over the years.

I don't see any solution to the current situation. One of part of the UK will always have to make sacrifices. Unless we want to consider timezone changes at the Scottish border?

Well at least that would be simple enough based on population; England has nearly 84% of the total. The other nations can choose their time zone at will. In railway terms, if Scotland went back to UCT in the winter, that would have a minimal impact, mainly IC services on the ECML and WCML. Wales I suspect wouldn't have an issue with sticking with English arrangements.
NI would probably stay the same as it would then remain aligned to Dublin. Probably the latest sunrise in settlements of any national time significance is in Inverness and Derry. In both of those the median of civil twighlight is about 08:30. I've never heard any compalints from Derry so I don't know why Scotland makes so much noise about it, - especiallly given their aspirations for independence.

 

[miklcct]

Something which on the surface seems to work, yet scratch a little beneath and pockets of 'local time' exist. Beijing Standard Time is roundly ignored in those areas.

The situation in Xinjiang is because of "political reason" (keeping Xinjiang time can be seen as a form of civil disobedience) - elsewhere (e.g. Tibet) only Beijing time is used, but office hours are also different compared to places with different longitude as it's simply impractical to live out of sync to the sun.

If you had one time zone across the whole of a country such as the United States, then the controversy would shift as to when sunrise and sunset should be.

Eg. Seattle on the West Coast is three hours behind New York on the East Coast.

So if sunrise is at 06:00 in New York, it would be at 03:00 in Seattle.

Similiarly if sunset is at 22:00 in New York it would be at 19:00 in Seattle.

People on the West Coast of the United States wouldn't be happy if they had to endure dark evenings just to suit people in New York or Washington.

So assume that the whole of USA used a single time, let's say San Fransisco time, people in New York will have school and work start and 6, have their evening commute at 14, TV prime time at 16, and bar closes at 22; while in Hawaii work and school starts at 11, evening commute at 19, TV prime time at 21 and bar closes at 3.

 

[Haywain]

If you had one time zone across the whole of a country such as the United States, then the controversy would shift as to when sunrise and sunset should be.

Is that open to discussion?

 

[py_megapixel]

I much prefer being awake in early mornings rather than later evenings, so sticking with GMT and just getting up a bit earlier would suit me!

 

[AlterEgo]

Changing the times we do things in the summer makes sense, to get the most out of the day. Of course, it would make most sense for all activities to change in relation to the solar day, at the same juncture, so we don't get conflicts between our obligations. Perhaps we could consider just changing the clocks?

 

[XAM2175]

Being quite far north, it doesn't really matter to me what happens during the summer months as it doesn't really get properly dark here at all. It's getting light at 3am and it's still fairly light at 10pm. I would be concerned at remaining on GMT+1 all year round, though - in the middle of winter it wouldn't start getting light until after 10am.

Same here - the clock changes are a wee bit of a nuisance but I prefer them to the concept of being at UTC +1 all year long.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

The real issue is surely the gradual change of our daily rhythms away from natural time.

When we were all living in caves long before clocks or time zones were invented, we generally got up at dawn and went to "bed" at dusk. Midnight really was the middle of the night, and midday really was the middle of the day.

Fast forward a few millennia and the majority of us are getting up several hours after dawn and going to bed several hours after dusk. We now have the situation where midnight is more or less bedtime.

The issue, therefore, is - like with a million other things - the collectively illogical behaviour of the human race.

 

[miklcct]

And why don't the railways make their biannual schedule change at the date of clock change? By doing so planning errors can be eliminated.

 

[DarloRich]

The developers I have spoken to say that if they are allowed to design systems with this in mind, it is not a problem.

However working with systems that are NOT designed with clock changes in mind is a major problem; even if you design your own systems with this in mind, if you are then forced to work with someone else's data, it can become a big problem that is out of your control.

ok, happy to accept that - as I said I havent had any issues of this nature raised in delivery discussions on IT systems/software.

PS I don't know about IT but my body clock hasn't reset itself properly!

 

[Cdd89]

However working with systems that are NOT designed with clock changes in mind is a major problem; even if you design your own systems with this in mind, if you are then forced to work with someone else's data, it can become a big problem that is out of your control.

Yep, I have first hand experience of DST changes causing issues. Developers of their own software don’t have to give much thought to time as it’s all handled by the operating system. However the software I work with is (effectively) a platform of drivers that integrates hundreds of different scientific machines and third party software, not all of which output their time and date values in UTC.

Even though very few customers are working at 2am, automated processes are, and every year you can be assured that some problem will have arisen somewhere with data integrity which can have severe knock on implications.

I suspect rail platforms are similar and people have already identified (superficial) anomalies.

If people really have confidence that this is an easy IT problem, then might I suggest moving the clock changes to 2pm, in order to stress-test the systems?

 

[Bald Rick]

And why don't the railways make their biannual schedule change at the date of clock change? By doing so planning errors can be eliminated.

that’s a very big assumption!

PS I don't know about IT but my body clock hasn't reset itself properly!

I’ve found, with the advancing years, that my body clock starts to reset itself about 2 weeks before the clocks go forward each March. For the last two weeks I have been waking up at about 0540. Today I was back to ‘normal’ at 0640.

 

[AM9]

Wow! That's strange so have I. Today it was 06:34, Saturday it was 05:25 'ish. I won't count Sunday because I was trying to get my wife home from the O2 when two consecutive northbound TL tains were cancelled (about 00:25 and 1:30 ISTR) - in the end I told her to go to Stanmore on the Jubilee. Were those cancellation s because of driver shortages or couldn't TL be bothered to run them because of the clocks going forward?

 

[PTR 444]

that’s a very big assumption!

If countries adopted an all-day, every day Takt timetable, it would just be a case of adding a later last train to the schedule for the summer months, and substituting it for an earlier first train during the winter months, assuming every service runs on the hour.

 

[nw1]

It causes problems that now most people want to abolish it and stay at one timezone - the EU voted to abolish it before Brexit but couldn't make progress unfortunately.

Just as long as that timezone is BST. I wouldn't want it to be the start of April and still dark by 7pm (it would feel like it's still winter) - or June and dark by 9pm.

Though to be fair we do "need" GMT in the middle of winter (only - 5 months is arguably too long) as otherwise mornings would be very dark in December and January. So I do think we need to change the clocks - though I would delay the onset of GMT to mid-Nov and bring forward the start of BST to early March. Before the change this week, the mornings were almost silly-light - yet it was still dark before 7.

 

[yorkie]

Just as long as that timezone is BST. I wouldn't want it to be the start of April and still dark by 7pm (it would feel like it's still winter) - or June and dark by 9pm.

Though to be fair we do "need" GMT in the middle of winter (only - 5 months is arguably too long) as otherwise mornings would be very dark in December and January. So I do think we need to change the clocks - though I would delay the onset of GMT to mid-Nov and bring forward the start of BST to early March. Before the change this week, the mornings were almost silly-light - yet it was still dark before 7.

Exactly this!

 

[miklcct]

Just as long as that timezone is BST. I wouldn't want it to be the start of April and still dark by 7pm (it would feel like it's still winter) - or June and dark by 9pm.

I find it uncomfortable in March, not long after the spring equinox, to have sunset so late at 19:35, but still completely dark at 06:15 for early trips. And in summer I find it more comfortable to have the sunset at 20:45 instead of 21:45 as well.

I travelled on a trip in Europe which went across a north-south border dividing places observing the same timezone in winter, but one observes summer time and the other doesn't. I found it more natural in the country which doesn't observe summer time.

Also, remember that most of the United Kingdom is located west of the prime meridian, therefore the "standard time" is already some time faster than the mean local solar time, for example, Bristol is 11 minutes behind Greenwich, and Belfast is 23 minutes and 39 seconds behind Greenwich. Adding one more hour on top of standard time will make the distortion too great from local solar time.

But the above doesn't matter in reality. If we have office hours from 9-17 when staying at UTC+1 year round, the office hours will be from 8-16 if we stay at UTC year round instead.

A sidenote: I'm now finding myself waking up and getting to bed very "late" - before the time change I seldom get to bed after midnight, and in generally wake up before 9 or 10, but in summer time getting to bed after "midnight" is common for me, and when I wake up it's already 10.

 

[nw1]

I’ve found, with the advancing years, that my body clock starts to reset itself about 2 weeks before the clocks go forward each March. For the last two weeks I have been waking up at about 0540. Today I was back to ‘normal’ at 0640.

I guess the very early sunrises immediately before the clock change (little more than an hour later than in June) would account for this. I find I wake up very early in mid-March, and again in May when the mornings once again become extremely light.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 29 Mar 2022 ==

And why don't the railways make their biannual schedule change at the date of clock change? By doing so planning errors can be eliminated.

There would be some merit in that, as then you could have a 'main' schedule and a 'winter' schedule, perhaps cut-down on some holiday-oriented routes, for the darker months. At the moment both timetables span both 'summer' and 'winter' months.

I do remember that in the 80s, certain dated trains began on the first Sunday in April (one week after the clock change) so there is some historical precedent for this.