Transport Companys' handling of Daylight Saving Time

[AmtrakBlue]

Thanks to all for answering my question. I had no idea it would spawn so many interesting comments!

Happens all the time here.

 

[jis]

Do you think airlines just have their planes circle for an hour that night in order to "stay on schedule"?

If necessary, they'd generally get to the end of the segment they are flying, then land and wait on the ground for their next departure. No different from what trains do. OTOH, many do fly around in circles for an hour before landing. Try arriving at London Heathrow early in the morning before the curfew has ended, due to favorable tail winds across the pond and have a repeated scenic tour of Epsom or some south of London suburb over and over and over again.

However, several of the major airlines actually have more capable flight management systems and do not depend on hosts to manage their schedules as Amtrak does, so they have more flexibility in how they at least internally timetable their flights.

The other interesting point about airlines is that for all blocks and specially for the longer leg blocks their schedules are based on estimates of mean block time anyway. It is quite normal for them to be sometimes hours early or late depending on which way the winds were blowing that day. Nothing that anyone can do anything about short of creating timetables on the fly and modifying them in flight for each flight. Incidentally that information is usually available in flight status, just like Amtrak publishes similar information in train status.

Airlines on longer legs do fly wildly different routes on each flight based on wind, weather and sometimes political factors on that given day.

In conclusion I gather that the question asked was a rhetorical one and not a serious one, or that there is much unfamiliarity about how things operate in the real world involved.

 

[Brian Battuello]

And Hans627, with Amtrak it's a good idea to tell your pickup people either to check the status page (if it is working) or tell them you'll call an hour out.

 

[Barb Stout]

Creating bespoke schedules for a single day sounds like an awful lot of work for almost no return.

The real solution is to get rid of the stupid time change twice a year. Pick a schedule and stick with it.

Yep, not switching back and forth between MST and MDT is pretty much the only thing I miss most about living in AZ. The SWC is not scheduled to be in AZ during the 2 am hour, correct?

 

[Lonnie]

I like it. Let's go back to when every town set noon by the sun over a convenient steeple or town hall.

Churches were (and still are) grouped around a central green in small towns and their steeples typically had one or more clocks. Most people couldn't afford a watch so these clocks and their chimings were the available timepieces. However, the clocks rarely agreed with each other, so you would specify: "I'll meet you at 4 o'clock Congregational time." Or Presbyterian time etc, as the case may be.

 

[Ryan]

Try arriving at London Heathrow early in the morning before the curfew has ended, due to favorable tail winds across the pond and have a repeated scenic tour of Epsom or some south of London suburb over and over and over again.

This got me curious, and looking at United 918 (IAD-LHR) has an entertaining loop or two every morning when she arrives in London (unless she's late):

 

[Ryan]

Churches were (and still are) grouped around a central green in small towns and their steeples typically had one or more clocks. Most people couldn't afford a watch so these clocks and their chimings were the available timepieces. However, the clocks rarely agreed with each other, so you would specify: "I'll meet you at 4 o'clock Congregational time." Or Presbyterian time etc, as the case may be.

The tradition persists (in a way) - as a congregation, we are habitually... not punctual... to the point where folks refer to "Ark and Dove time" much to the chagrin of our head pastor who tries mightily to keep things moving in a timely manner.

 

[BlackDiamond]

I don't recall ever arriving at Heathrow without circling for a while, usually over the Staines reservoirs. Even going back to my first trip in 1961 aboard a PanAm DC-7C, back when real airplanes had propellers

 

[jis]

This got me curious, and looking at United 918 (IAD-LHR) has an entertaining loop or two every morning when she arrives in London (unless she's late):
View attachment 25356

I speak from personal experience. I don't need a map of south suburbs of London anymore ---- juuust kidding.

In the reverse direction, often the Canadians get to do the honors before feeding the oceanic flights into the hopper of the US en route flow control network.

US domestically tries mightily to avoid such by flow controlling a lot of things at the source by using select ground holds for selected routes based on expected congestion at destination many hours out. Sometimes it works and sometimes not. Afterall you cannot precisely guess the arrival details of thunderstorms over airport, which basically shuts down ground operations. When it doesn't work (NY TCO is notorious for that), approaching Newark from the West you get to enjoy the scenery around Williamsport PA or some such and sometimes even get to enjoy at ground views at random airports here and there within the range of the remaining fuel One time coming back from Barabados we enjoyed several hours at BWI while a vicious front took its own time passing over the New York area.

 

[Chatter163]

This is the most insane thing I have ever heard.

Really? Your life must be austere, indeed.

 

[alpha3]

Who needs notice? You just program the correct times into the schedule when you put the tickets on sale. The reservation should just always show the correct time. If anything the fact that there is no printed timetable anymore makes this easier to implement but even if there was a timetable you can easily fix this with a footnote that says "the scheduled train will depart an hour earlier than the scheduled time for all stops after XXX station on 11/7/2021."

Do you think airlines just have their planes circle for an hour that night in order to "stay on schedule"?

Danib62 is absolutely correct. The notion that a train should 'hold' somewhere for an hour is ludicrous and prehistoric by any measure. Like was stated above, no airline in the world would do this and their schedules are by far more complex than a railroads. The time at any given location in the world is the 'time.' Period. That's what computerized scheduling is for. It may look weird on schedules during a time change but so what. The train arrived x location at 2am and leaves 30min later at 130am. Time change. So what.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Danib62 is absolutely correct. The notion that a train should 'hold' somewhere for an hour is ludicrous and prehistoric by any measure. Like was stated above, no airline in the world would do this and their schedules are by far more complex than a railroads. The time at any given location in the world is the 'time.' Period. That's what computerized scheduling is for. It may look weird on schedules during a time change but so what. The train arrived x location at 2am and leaves 30min later at 130am. Time change. So what.

Do planes run on host flight patterns?

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Ok, you naysayers, how about letting us know how many trains are affected by the Thome change - how many are scheduled to arrive/depart stations within an hour of 2 am?

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Danib62 is absolutely correct. The notion that a train should 'hold' somewhere for an hour is ludicrous and prehistoric by any measure. Like was stated above, no airline in the world would do this and their schedules are by far more complex than a railroads. The time at any given location in the world is the 'time.' Period. That's what computerized scheduling is for. It may look weird on schedules during a time change but so what. The train arrived x location at 2am and leaves 30min later at 130am. Time change. So what.

So it's ludicrous and prehistoric by "any measure" but the only measure considered is what you presume airlines might do with no regard to what other passenger trains actually do. Then you go into some circular logic about the time being the time because "period" and "so what?" Thanks for that helpful and well reasoned explanation.

For example there are two warring camps which actually agree that DST should be done away with but are ready to kill each other on the issue of whether the year round time should be the DTS for that time zone or the standard time for that time zone. And of course are warring on the same side with the DST aficionados simultaneously!

So far as I can tell the year-round DST camp seems to have most of the momentum despite also having the most difficult path to success among the three options.

 

[alpha3]

So it's ludicrous and prehistoric by "any measure" but the only measure considered is what you presume airlines might do with no regard to what other passenger trains actually do. Then you go into some circular logic about the time being the time because "period" and "so what?" Thanks for that helpful and well reasoned explanation.

You're not providing anything well reasoned; all you're doing is attacking what I said without providing any informed debate whatsoever. And I'm not presuming what air carriers do. I'm very familiar as I worked in the operations center of a major carrier for several years. Amtrak, as many people comment on here, has a need to upgrade lots of things, not the least of which is their IT - and their operations can use some upgrade as well. I'm not a fan of DST, it would be better by far to stick to one time like standard time, but I doubt that'll happen. All that's being said here is that in this day and age of computerization of all things, there are more efficient ways to handle the time change than by just sitting or becoming an hour late and trying to make it up.

 

[jebr]

You're not providing anything well reasoned; all you're doing is attacking what I said without providing any informed debate whatsoever. And I'm not presuming what air carriers do. I'm very familiar as I worked in the operations center of a major carrier for several years. Amtrak, as many people comment on here, has a need to upgrade lots of things, not the least of which is their IT - and their operations can use some upgrade as well. I'm not a fan of DST, it would be better by far to stick to one time like standard time, but I doubt that'll happen. All that's being said here is that in this day and age of computerization of all things, there are more efficient ways to handle the time change than by just sitting or becoming an hour late and trying to make it up.

Ways that the host railroads will agree to? That the computer won't complain about? That passengers will easily understand? The Empire Builder leaves MSP at 8 am daily; why muddle that by saying "except on the two days after DST starts and ends, then it'll shift an hour?"

The solution isn't elegant, but it works without breaking what people "know" is the time for "their train," it's something that everyone has agreed upon, and it's able to work with the current computer systems. Why spend hundreds, if not thousands, of people hours trying to make a few trains work slightly better a few times a year?

 

[Qapla]

And .... the people riding the trains on those days should already know that those adjustments are being made if they just pay attention

 

[CCC1007]

And .... the people riding the trains on those days should already know that those adjustments are being made if they just pay attention

"If they just pay attention"
See all the threads about collisions with vehicles? Do you think the general public actually pays any attention to stuff outside their own lives? Even a time change can sneak up on a person very easily...

 

[Qapla]

I guess it is a big IF

 

[SarahZ]

What is everyone so pressed about? If a train holds for an hour, it still arrives at the next station on time due to the time change.

 

[Willbridge]

The Daylight Time shifts also cause problems for intercity buses, urban transit, Sunday newspapers, delivery services, and the like. There also are various dates for the switch, depending on which country you communicate with.

That's aside from the proven health problems.

 

[lstone19]

Danib62 is absolutely correct. The notion that a train should 'hold' somewhere for an hour is ludicrous and prehistoric by any measure. Like was stated above, no airline in the world would do this and their schedules are by far more complex than a railroads.

As a former airline operations analyst with considerable involvement in schedules, I disagree that airline schedules are more complex than railroads (well, in some ways they are but in others they aren't). First, at least at my carrier, schedules are based in UTC (aka GMT) and are then converted to local. So the time change gets incorporated into the schedule as viewed in local time automatically.

Second, flights are managed by segment - a segment being a departure to an arrival. Even if the flight has multiple segments, each segment is managed on its own (if Amtrak ran a train by segment, a NYP-WAS Acela would be managed as NYP-NWK, then NWK-PHL, PHL-WIL, etc.). So an airline flight segment is affected by a time change only if it occurred during that segment; with Amtrak, a time change on the first night of a two-night train affects every segment downline of it until the train reaches it's terminus over 24 hours later.

Third, the only flights affected by time changes are red-eyes. At least for my carrier, that's a relatively small number domestically. And as for international, North America and Europe don't change on the same dates. While the U.S. moves off daylight time tonight, Europe did it a week ago so for my carrier, we had temporary schedules for all this week (in the Spring, Europe changes on the last Sunday of March). And then some countries don't change at all and it's largely backwards in the southern hemisphere.

So for tonight, let's say there is a San Francisco-Chicago flight that normally departs SFO at 11:30pm (0630 UTC) and arrives Chicago at 5:30am (1030 UTC). Tonight, it would still be in the schedule as 0630 to 1030 except the arrival time at Chicago would translate to 4:30am and that's what the passenger would see. And if the were then connecting to a flight further east at 7:00am, it's still going to depart at 7:00am so just like Amtrak, they get to sit for an hour only they do it at their connecting airport rather than having their flight hold for an hour.

Now if this were March when we turn the clocks ahead an hour, that normal 5:30am arrival becomes 6:30am. Does the passenger risk missing their connection? No, because the reservation system builds legal connections on the fly and never offers the customer the illegal 6:30am to 7:00am connection (or schedule planning sees the problem in advance and moves that 11:30pm departure up to 11:00pm for one night to restore the connections - and most people won't even realize it was changed for one night as I don't think any airline publishes full timetables anymore).

 

[jis]

@lstone19 you hit the nail on the head in pointing out that airlines are scheduled by segments whereas trains are scheduled by train identity. As you point out, trying to schedule trains like airlines would be quite ludicrous. I was alluding to this in my earlier post but did not do a very good job of it. So thank you for pointing this out so succinctly.

And the knock on effect of this stretching into schedules for multiple days itself makes it worthwhile to not propagate it in timetable but let the normal course of late running take care of it in March and bring things to timetable close to the place where the time change occurs in November. It is perfectly logical and there is absolutely no need to change this.

 

[joelkfla]

So if a train is scheduled to depart at 1:30 am, is it the first 1:30 am, or the 2nd one? And does it make difference whether it's the originating terminal or a stop en route?

And what about an exact 2 am departure?

 

[jis]

It is an issue only in November fall back. One could just stick to the first occurrence. Things will iron out at the next stop assuming it is after 2am. If not rinse and repeat.