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

[etr221]

We are on a similar longitude to France, and I consider their hours more civilised, that is not being woken up by dawn at about five in the morning in midsummer.

Current Fremch time zone (Central European, +1 relative to UK) is - I understand - a legacy of the German occupation during WW2. From 1911 (before then Paris time) to 1940 it used West European time (same as GB)

 

[DelW]

It was proved unpopular to stay at GMT+1 - but how about reverting to GMT all year?

That's never been tried in my lifetime, but I think the shortening of summer evenings would be regretted by quite a lot of people.

 

[Starmill]

I think that those arguing that there's no controversy here are wrong. Describing the change as dreaded is incorrect. However, it's also wrong to say that the current system is uncontroversial.

There's a body of support who say that the UK should set its time zone equivalent to UTC+1 all year round. This is the same times as are observed during British Summer Time i.e. currently.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Mar 2022 ==

It was proved unpopular to stay at GMT+1 - but how about reverting to GMT all year?

'proved unpopular' unpopular with whom? You? I would be very strongly against setting the time zone here the same as UTC all year.

The railway should be obliged to display the local time and stick to it in all circumstances. It's not difficult, it's what Eurostar and others do. TV and radio schedules don't seem to have any difficulties. I don't understand why some British train operators do.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Mar 2022 ==

On most routes trains stop running before 1am so it doesn't make any difference.

The fact that there are some routes where trains run beyond this time makes it inexcusable that a fix isn't implemented.

 

[johncrossley]

That's never been tried in my lifetime, but I think the shortening of summer evenings would be regretted by quite a lot of people.

If you want longer summer evenings then go to work earlier.

 

[Starmill]

If you want longer summer evenings then go to work earlier.

I don't think that's how it works.

 

[yorkie]

The fact that there are some routes where trains run beyond this time makes it inexcusable that a fix isn't implemented.

Agreed; it's a real problem.

Not a major problem at this time of year but it is much more problematic in the Autumn.

Those who claim the railway should do nothing are not thinking about this from a customer service point of view; furthermore, how do these people explain that some services did have alterations?

GTR didn't make alterations on their Thameslink route but did on Great Northern, eg.:

Realtime Trains | 0206 London Kings Cross to Letchworth | 27/03/2022

Real-time train running information for 0206 departure from London Kings Cross to Letchworth on 27/03/2022. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

Altered WTT schedule
27th March 2022 only

2R74 0206 London Kings Cross to Letchworth​

I can't see any good reason why this can't be done across the board.

If you want longer summer evenings then go to work earlier.

Who does this apply to? You say "you" but if I got to work an hour earlier I'd still finish at the same time.

In any case, what @DelW says is absolutely correct.

 

[johncrossley]

I don't think that's how it works.

I know. But that's how it should work, instead of pretending that the time is one hour later than it actually is. Why not go to work at 8 instead of 9? That has the same effect as changing the clocks.

 

[yorkie]

I know. But that's how it should work, instead of pretending that the time is one hour later than it actually is. Why not go to work at 8 instead of 9? That has the same effect as changing the clocks.

If I went to work at 0730 instead of 0830 it would just give me an extra hour at work for no reason or benefit. It would make no difference.

If you want me to be able to enjoy an extra hour of sunlight in the evening, the only way to achieve that is to be on GMT+1, which is what we are currently on. I would object in the strongest terms possible to GMT all year round. I personally would be happy to have GMT+1 all year round but others may not be.

How about we change the clocks and you can go into work an hour later if that works for you?

 

[Starmill]

I know. But that's how it should work, instead of pretending that the time is one hour later than it actually is. Why not go to work at 8 instead of 9? That has the same effect as changing the clocks.

I'm afraid that your suggestion rather relies on people synchronising their days doesn't it. We could of course achieve that by... changing the time? But clearly not by your unofficial method, for the reason given above by @yorkie.

 

[johncrossley]

Who does this apply to? You say "you" but if I got to work an hour earlier I'd still finish at the same time.

That is just psychological. Go home one hour earlier as well. I'm taking about changing the regular office hours in general.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Mar 2022 ==

I'm afraid that your suggestion rather relies on people synchronising their days doesn't it. We could of course achieve that by... changing the time? But clearly not by your unofficial method.

Surely it makes more sense to change the time that people do stuff rather than fiddling with the clock?

 

[yorkie]

That is just psychological. Go home one hour earlier as well. I'm taking about changing the regular office hours in general.

How would we change the hours "in general"? Isn't that effectively what we do; this is another description of effectively changing the clocks?

The point is that I am finishing work at the time I am finishing work regardless of what time I go in. I will be finishing work tomorrow around 1715 regardless of what time I go into work. The only way the actual time alters in relation to the position of the sun is if we change the clocks.

 

[johncrossley]

How would we change the hours "in general"? Isn't that effectively what we do; this is another description of effectively changing the clocks?

It is the same effect, but without violating the agreement between clocks and solar time.

 

[yorkie]

It is the same effect, but without violating the agreement between clocks and solar time.

As it's the same effect, I think you will just have to accept this 'violation' while the rest of us get on with enjoying the lighter evenings

 

[baz962]

As Thameslink are usually 24/7 , but with around a four hour gap on Saturday night and into Sunday morning , couldn't we change the clocks at around 04.00 instead. ( Not a serious suggestion ).

 

[Starmill]

That is just psychological.

No it isn't. Other people would agree to change their schedules.

 

[miklcct]

It doesn't solve the problem though, the journey planners shown all have departure time, arrival time and duration. If the schedules skipped an hour the duration would be wrong. It would also break existing journey planners as they assume the whole schedule runs in the time zone of the start time and adjust the display times for clock changes. Any trains on the skipped hour run an hour later. Adjusting the schedule times is more problematic when the clocks go back as there are two 0100 to 0200 hours one in each time zone so journey planners would need enhancement to avoid offering invalid connections.

The error in the journey planners looks to be applying both directions of clock change on the same day. The 0:11 GMT to 2:06 BST 55 mins South Western Railway and 2:21 BST to 2:26 BST 5 mins Thameslink have both been forwarded the hour correctly. When the time passes 2:00 GMT/3:00 BST the times are incorrectly showing as an hour earlier. The Thameslink one shows the clock change icon indicating the duration is different due to a clock change, but there shouldn't have been one for this journey.

The industry practice in scheduled airlines is to always display the local time as applicable to the calling point. I see no reason why this can't be adopted in railways. For comparison, in Russia, the past practice was to publish only Moscow time for long-distance trains, but local time in suburban trains, but since 2018 it has also moved to local time in line with airlines as well.

By adopting this practice, it will not be wrong to "skip the hour" when showing trains running through the time change (e.g. 00:52 St Pancras, then 02:02 Blackfriars). It will also not be wrong when the clock goes back as it's obvious from the schedule, unless the train in question runs wholly within the repeated hour.

The reason why journey planner forwards the hour is that, in the standard date / time library in UNIX systems, when we enter times between 2022-03-27 01:20 in Europe/London time zone, it will be translated to 01:20 UTC if it is handled as a time stamp, where it is represented as a simple integer internally as the number of seconds from 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC, excluding leap seconds. And when it is displayed back to the user, the UTC time falls into British Summer Time in Europe/London, so it shows 02:20.

If you want longer summer evenings then go to work earlier.

This is my point as well. I actually prefer office hours starting at 08:00 and ending at 16:00 while staying at GMT year round. Office hour ending at 17:00 or even 17:30 is a waste of daylight in winter.

Agreed; it's a real problem.

Not a major problem at this time of year but it is much more problematic in the Autumn.

Those who claim the railway should do nothing are not thinking about this from a customer service point of view; furthermore, how do these people explain that some services did have alterations?

It is less problematic in autumn in my view, as trains can simply stop at a station for the hour when the clock repeats.

And as someone has brought office hours into the discussion, let's take Xinjiang as an example. All of China currently runs on a single time zone at UTC+8 although it geographically spans across UTC+5 to UTC+9. The fact that the whole country runs on a single time zone massively simplifies scheduling, unlike in the USA where television channels are separated. Xinjiang is physically located in UTC+6 and, "officially", times are in the national time (Beijing time), and all public transport schedule is shown only in the official time. However, there is also an "unofficial" time zone UTC+6 in use, called Xinjiang time or Ürümqi time, used almost exclusively within the Uyghurs where few Hans know its existence. In general Hans use Beijing time and Uyghurs use Xinjiang time, and the television channels reflect this usage by scheduling the Chinese channel in Beijing time and Uyghur and Kazakh channels in Xinjiang time. Therefore in cross-cultural communication the time zone has to be specified to prevent ambiguity. In Xinjiang summer, sun doesn't set before 22:00 (Beijing time), while in Shenzhen and Shanghai, it's already completely dark in late night.

And on top of that, the government office hours also change by season:
- summer office hours: 09:30 - 13:30 / 16:00 - 20:00 Beijing Time
- winter office hours: 10:00 - 14:00 / 15:30 - 19:30 Beijing Time
i.e. the lunch break is an hour longer in summer compared to winter. And while most Chinese in the "mainland" works 8-17, those in Xinjiang works 10-19 instead even if they observe Beijing time to compensate for the solar time difference. As the national news is broadcast in at 19:00, the "prime time" in "mainland" China, people in Xinjiang think that the news is broadcasted so early (19:00 is the "evening commute" hour there when people normally just leave work, comparable to 17:00 in "mainland" China), and local channels will repeat the news recording again later in the evening.

It is actually comparable, where the summer time there is also 2 hours ahead of solar time, with a long lunch break as well. So it's always solar time to decide the work pattern in a community, and when noon isn't 12:00 people will compensate for it, as Xinjiang shows us.

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. In such case the benefit of summer evening can be retained with minimal disruption while removing the complicated planning work needed for clock change (as in this case it is just simply a winter - summer or summer - winter timetable transition planned in the normal way, taking the advantage it's always on school holiday as well)

 

[dosxuk]

Sticking to GMT all year would also have the effect of it getting light by 3am in the middle of summer, while being dark by 9pm.

While sticking with BST all year isn't popular enough to go ahead, it does have enough support, and had been trialled. The levels of support for staying with GMT all year are tiny in comparison.

We're going to be sticking with the dreaded () change for a while longer. And I don't think a decision to change is going to be driven by a desire to please software engineers who can't be bothered to write timezone aware software, or to reduce the inconvenience or confusion of the handful of passengers travelling between 1am and 2am on a couple of Saturday nights.

 

[yorkie]

I don't mind if the clocks change or not; providing we are on GMT+1 during Summer I am easygoing regarding whether we are on GMT or +1 during winter.

Those who call for GMT all year round and ask for others to adjust their timings need to consider that maybe they could be the ones making their own adjustments?

Anyway next Autumn, which 0100 will an 0100 train depart at? The first or second?

 

[AM9]

It was proved unpopular to stay at GMT+1 - but how about reverting to GMT all year?

It wasn't 'proved unpopular' in 1971, there was a general indifference to changing anything, - particularly by those in power, bear in mind that the change was initiated by the Harold Wilson govenment. The Heath government reverted to the original arrangement in 1971, - typical 'not invented here' attitudes of our 2-party FPTP system.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Mar 2022 ==

Though the then-recent introduction of drink-driving limits and roadside breathalyser tests was responsible for a debatable proportion of the afternoon / evening improvement, a fact not admitted until much later.

Not according to my linked article, published in 2019.

 

[Stephen42]

Agreed; it's a real problem.

Not a major problem at this time of year but it is much more problematic in the Autumn.

Those who claim the railway should do nothing are not thinking about this from a customer service point of view; furthermore, how do these people explain that some services did have alterations?

GTR didn't make alterations on their Thameslink route but did on Great Northern, eg.:

Realtime Trains | 0206 London Kings Cross to Letchworth | 27/03/2022

Real-time train running information for 0206 departure from London Kings Cross to Letchworth on 27/03/2022. From Realtime Trains, an independent source of train running info for Great Britain.

www.realtimetrains.co.uk

I can't see any good reason why this can't be done across the board.

Aside from the Luton Airport shuttle and Hatfield - St Albans bus, no GTR passenger schedules started between 0100 and 0159 today. Across all operators only 29 started between 0100 and 0159 all but 5 of which were buses. It seems reasonable to use the 02xx version where possible to avoid the TRUST reporting issue though journey planners should work with either. The Thameslink ones you are referring to started before 0100 so can't have the subsequent timings altered without breaking existing journey planners behaviour see post #60. Agree whatever caused the bug on the journey planner should be fixed possibly a misconfiguration issue.

There isn't an easy solution to the Autumn one, any of a 25 hour clock, infill day like Underground night tube or an operating characteristic for the 2nd 0100-0200 would have a whole host of downstream effects for very few services.

 

[Peter0124]

If I went to work at 0730 instead of 0830 it would just give me an extra hour at work for no reason or benefit. It would make no difference.

If you want me to be able to enjoy an extra hour of sunlight in the evening, the only way to achieve that is to be on GMT+1, which is what we are currently on. I would object in the strongest terms possible to GMT all year round. I personally would be happy to have GMT+1 all year round but others may not be.

How about we change the clocks and you can go into work an hour later if that works for you?

GMT+1 all year round would mean a sunrise of 09:45 where I live (Glasgow) at the Winter Solstice, there's just no way of balancing it it seems (other than to change the clocks every March/October of course) as 0945 sunrise is far too late.

 

[yorkie]

There isn't an easy solution to the Autumn one, any of a 25 hour clock, infill day like Underground night tube or an operating characteristic for the 2nd 0100-0200 would have a whole host of downstream effects for very few services.

Is there an answer as to what happens; do they use the first or second 0100?

I don't really see why schedules can't be amended; they were for trains out of Kings Cross this weekend.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Mar 2022 ==

GMT+1 all year round would mean a sunrise of 09:45 where I live (Glasgow) at the Winter Solstice, there's just no way of balancing it it seems as 0945 sunrise is far too late.

I don't see why we can't go to work in the dark given we leave work in the dark; I think the main intention of daylight saving is around school kids being able to avoid the dark, but that doesn't apply even now where kids have long journeys to school or if they attend after school activities.

Anyway as far as I'm concerned we either keep DST or if we had to abolish it, the only remotely sensible option is GMT+1.

If GMT+1 isn't acceptable then we simply continue with DST changes twice a year; I would like to see the Autumn change put back a few weeks and the Spring change brought forward though

 

[GusB]

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.

I think things are fine as they are and should be left alone.

 

[miklcct]

Anyway as far as I'm concerned we either keep DST or if we had to abolish it, the only remotely sensible option is GMT+1.

The only sensible option is GMT if we keep the same time year round as it is the geographical time zone of Great Britain. Remember that GMT stands for "Greenwich Mean Time" - the mean solar time as observed at Greenwich Observatory. It will be an oxymoron if Greenwich doesn't observe Greenwich Mean Time.

 

[AM9]

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.

I think things are fine as they are and should be left alone.

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.

 

[JRT]

As Thameslink are usually 24/7 , but with around a four hour gap on Saturday night and into Sunday morning , couldn't we change the clocks at around 04.00 instead. ( Not a serious suggestion ).

Many years ago it was an 02:00–03:00 change I think, changed to 01:00–02:00 (and the current dates) to harmonize with the rest of the EEC.

 

[AM9]

Many years ago it was an 02:00–03:00 change I think, changed to 01:00–02:00 (and the current dates) to harmonize with “Europe”.

Why the inverted commas around Europe, it still includes the UK, - the UK hasn't moved continents?

 

[Peter0124]

Is there an answer as to what happens; do they use the first or second 0100?

I don't really see why schedules can't be amended; they were for trains out of Kings Cross this weekend.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Mar 2022 ==


I don't see why we can't go to work in the dark given we leave work in the dark; I think the main intention of daylight saving is around school kids being able to avoid the dark, but that doesn't apply even now where kids have long journeys to school or if they attend after school activities.

Anyway as far as I'm concerned we either keep DST or if we had to abolish it, the only remotely sensible option is GMT+1.

If GMT+1 isn't acceptable then we simply continue with DST changes twice a year; I would like to see the Autumn change put back a few weeks and the Spring change brought forward though

I suppose they could instead start school at 10 or 10.30am during the winter, that way it should be brighter. To be honest I don't know why school started so early I was always rushing out of bed running for the bus/train.

 

[JRT]

Why the inverted commas around Europe, it still includes the UK, - the UK hasn't moved conti

Why the inverted commas around Europe, it still includes the UK, - the UK hasn't moved continents?

At the time, the countries the other side of the English Channel were referred to as Europe.
“Fly to Europe” poster at local airport?

Just using a shortcut, maybe I should have said the rest of the EEC?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Mar 2022 ==

I suppose they could instead start school at 10 or 10.30am during the winter, that way it should be brighter. To be honest I don't know why school started so early I was always rushing out of bed running for the bus/train.

I did have the problem of cycling to school at the time, but fortunately classes didn't start until 09:35.

 

[Watershed]

It will be an oxymoron if Greenwich doesn't observe Greenwich Mean Time.

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.