Permanent Daylight Saving Time--A Good Idea?

The Senate passed a bill yesterday that would make Daylight Saving Time permanent--in other words, we would always set our clocks one hour ahead of "sun time," and not reset them twice a year in March and November. This has been touted as a good idea, reducing confusion, decreasing energy use, etc.

But I think there are some practical concerns not taken into consideration. First of all, there's the issue of early morning darkness in the winter months. On January 1, sunrise in Bangor ME (about as far east as you can get in the US) is at 7:13 standard time. That would make it 8:13 if we switched to permanent daylight saving time. That would mean lot of traffic, including school buses and kids walking to school, in the twilight of just before and just after dawn.

And it would be even worse on the western side of the Eastern Time Zone (or any time zone, as I will explain). You see, our time zones are each approximately 15 degrees of longitude, about the distance the sun "travels" in an hour. But the time for each zone is determined by a place in about the middle of that zone, so the eastern side is really about 30 minutes earlier than that and the western side about 30 minutes later. On January 1, sunrise in Indianapolis (almost as far west as you can get in the Eastern Time Zone) is at 8:06 EST, nearly an hour later than in Bangor--and thus would be at 9:06 EDT, if we went to year-round daylight saving. Businesses would be opening their doors while it was still dark out, so commuters would be traveling in pitch darkness.

Energy savings? People would be getting up before the sun heats their homes, meaning more fuel to heat their homes not less. They would be up and about before the light begins streaming through their windows, meaning more electricity being used.

Sure there would be more light in the late afternoon, but evening rush hour would still be mostly in the dark and we'd still be eating dinner under electric lights.

Is the convenience of not changing your clock twice a year worth all that? (Especially when most of us have devices that do it automatically, anyway.)