R.I. waits as bigger states, like Massachusetts, weigh costs of doing away with the twice-yearly practice

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — In the middle of the night on Sunday, Nov. 5, clocks will “fall back” out of daylight-saving time and Rhode Islanders will gain one precious hour of extra sleep, along with more than four months of early darkness.

People may be resigned to it, but a new draft report commissioned by Massachusetts lawmakers concluded that the current practice of changing time twice a year makes New Englanders more likely to become crime victims, have a heart attack or crash their car, among other unpleasant outcomes.

Because the region is on the eastern edge of the expansive Eastern Time Zone, during winter months not covered by daylight-saving time darkness descends earlier in the day here — well before 5 p.m. — compared with places farther west like, say, Indiana.

Those dark afternoons and evenings, combined with the sleep disruption caused by “springing forward” in the March return to daylight-saving time, cause a number of negative effects, including lost retail sales, poorer public health, wasted electricity and unnecessary stress on the regional power grid, according to the Massachusetts report.

"Adopting year-round Daylight Saving Time would improve public health in the Commonwealth," the report said. "And also by providing residents with additional evening daylight during the winter ... would lead to increased physical activity among residents.”

Despite the drawbacks of the current system, efforts to change it have gone nowhere, and the findings of the Massachusetts time change study group last month have done little to interest political leaders in disrupting the status quo.

“It’s not a conversation the governor has had with other governors,” said David Ortiz, spokesman for Gov. Gina Raimondo, about the time zone debate.

"It is not an issue that has been on the speaker’s radar," said Larry Berman, spokesman for House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello.

Gov. Charlie Baker's office declined to comment on the new report, which was a Massachusetts legislative priority.

"I think the time zones we have are fine, and they've been fine for a very long time,” Baker said back in 2016 when lawmakers attached the time change study commission to the state budget. “I especially worry that if we head too far down this road we could end up creating a lot of problems for ourselves with respect to all sorts of issues around work schedules, commuting schedules and a whole bunch of other things."

In other words: Who wants to be a time outlier?

Any state that chooses to switch time zones would put itself on a temporal island, out of sync with its neighbors, the nation’s capital and largest city for the four-plus months the East Coast operates on Eastern Standard Time.

Residents of that state would have to know whether to subtract an hour when looking at flight schedules, out-of-state meetings or basketball tip-off times.

Keenly aware of that drawback, the study commission recommended the Bay State move to permanent daylight-saving time only "if a majority of other New England states also do so."

(Note: the federal government does not allow permanent daylight-saving time, so technically a state would have to move to the one-hour-earlier Atlantic Time Zone, which is used by the Canadian maritime provinces, and then abandon daylight-saving time to achieve the same effect.)

Daylight-saving time was first used on a temporary basis during Word War I (initially by Germany and then the United States) to save fuel used for lighting. Congress brought daylight-saving time back permanently in 1966, and has modified the annual start and end dates several times since. Time will spring ahead by one hour on March 11, 2018.

All the New England states except Vermont have considered legislation to move to eliminate springing forward and falling back, with Maine coming the closest to pulling the trigger.

Rhode Island state Rep. Blake Filippi, R-Block Island, has introduced a bill the last two years that would move the Ocean State to Atlantic Time if Massachusetts goes first. The bill has never made it out of committee.

"A [time change] champion has to be heavyweight like New York or Massachusetts," Filippi said. "A little state like Rhode Island going alone would be like stepping off a cliff.”

The second major condition the Massachusetts time zone commission placed on moving to permanent daylight-saving time was a corresponding, wholesale move to later school start times to prevent children from heading to the bus stop in the dark.

Provoking such a change would be a significant positive in its own right, the report noted, as evidence suggests teenagers would do better in school if classes started later and they got more sleep.

Parents of small children, who do not respect the numbers on the clock regardless of time zone, could also gain sleep from eliminating the twice-annual time change.

Peter Shattuck, Massachusetts director of clean energy advocacy group The Acadia Center, served on the time change commission and said the experience convinced him setting the clocks back in the winter "is really an outdated practice."

On the energy front, Shattuck said dark winter afternoons cause New Englanders to use more electricity for lighting at the same times the regional power grid faces natural gas shortages from the competing demand from home heating customers.

Despite the current reluctance among governors to get involved in time change now, Shattuck said he thought the issue could best be advanced in discussions of the Coalition of Northeast Governors, which includes the leaders of the six New England states and New York; or the New England Governors Eastern Canadian Premiers conferences.

"I had always begrudged it personally in November when we lost that light, but it was illuminating to me when you see all the benefits laid out," Shattuck said. "I think we would have to do it regionally, but there is a lot of regional coordination on many issues."

In Rhode Island, the issue of time change was on the back burner well before Raimondo took office.

Former Gov. Lincoln Chafee said in an email that he hadn't looked into the issue during his term in office, but the idea of sharing a time zone with Atlantic Canada intrigues him.

"If we align with New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, would New England then go metric?" he wrote.

— panderson@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7384

On Twitter: @PatrickAnderso_