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Average school start/end times in BC are 8:30 AM and 3 PM. Standard time in Vancouver puts sunrise/sunset at 8AM/415PM at winter solstice for standard time.
by bryanlarsen 8mo ago
Average school start/end times in BC are 8:30 AM and 3 PM. Standard time in Vancouver puts sunrise/sunset at 8AM/415PM at winter solstice for standard time. That's 30 minutes of daylight before school and 75 minutes after school. IOW, kids are more likely to be walking in the dark in the morning, even with standard time.
Switching to daylight time will switch sunrise/sunset to 9AM/515PM, guaranteeing kids will be walking in the dark in the morning.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- bryanlarsen 8mo agoP.S. Switching to daylight time makes more sense in Eastern BC than it does in Western BC. But Eastern BC is relatively unpopulated. The population of Penticton is 40,000 vs 3,000,000 in metro Vancouver. Second largest metro (Victoria) is west of Vancouver. Penticton experiences sunrise/sunset about 25 minutes before Vancouver, so their kids experience approximately equal amounts of sun before & after school on the winter solstice.
- sefrost 8mo agoI know exactly what you mean with your comment, but interesting fact, Vancouver is in the East of BC! BC is huge in both directions.
- bryanlarsen 8mo agoEven more so when you consider that most of metro Vancouver lives east of Vancouver city.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- __turbobrew__ 8mo agoPenticton is also in a valley so in reality the sun goes behind the mountains in the west around 3:30PM.
- throw0101c 8mo ago* https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/canada/vancouver?month=12&year=2025 https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/canada/vancouver?month=12&ye...
- amatecha 8mo agoyeah the 4:15 PM sunset actually means it's getting dark at 3:30 PM. Pretty ridiculous. For everyone like "the kids have to walk to school in the dark!" it seems like they aren't considering that kids generally don't care at all what the morning is like because their day is about to be consumed by an obligation they never agreed to (school). When they're finally free for the day, it's effectively dark outside. The perspective among my peer group when I was a kid was that daylight savings system is totally clueless, has never made sense, and we should permanently switch to the schedule that allows more daylight after school (aka DST).
- bena 8mo agoBut we care about the kids. It's not about whether or not the kids are having a good time, but whether or not groggy people on their way to work can see them.
- ikr678 8mo agoWould the better thing to do be to vary school hours by season? Add an hour in summer and remove an hour in winter?.
- bena 8mo agoNo school in summer. When we start getting more sun, it’s fine in the morning even with the spring forward. We go back to standard time in winter because otherwise it stays dark too long. And all of this ignores the core fact that time zones are way more politically determined than geographically. And that’s a whole other problem
- Wowfunhappy 8mo agoThis is basically what Daylight Savings Time does.
- prpl 8mo agoif it ends up being an issue, then the schools could just change start time?
- andyferris 8mo agoBut that's the whole thing. Why change the clocks when we could change the definition of school time, business hours, liquor/gambling licensing hours, construction noise hours, etc? Just use standard time and then base our society around the physics of the sun.
- galangalalgol 8mo agoAnd if we do that, why can't we all just use unix time and let school can just atart whenever makes sense
- henrikschroder 8mo agoThe reason for daylight savings, as batshit insane as it sounds, is that it's easier to authoritatively tell people what time it is, with a one-hour jump twice a year, than to tell people to change business hours twice a year for a better experience around daylight. It's absolutely fascinating from a psychology standpoint. My one big hope for when countries now stop doing the stupid clock change thing, is that people become a lot more flexible around business hours and school hours, and adapt a schedule that fits people.
- hilbert42 8mo ago"…easier to authoritatively tell people what time it is, with a one-hour jump twice a year,…" Exactly. Also, changing business hours to suit specific work conditions would ease traffic congestion. For instance, a farmer would milk cows at different times of the year. Similarly, milk tankers would be on the road at hours set by cows' routines.
- s1artibartfast 8mo agoNo, kids will just die because schools match the offices, which match expected hours
- djmips 8mo agoMove the school starts later. Problem solved.
- teunispeters 8mo agoSpeaking as growing up in Fort St John, BC, sunrise was after school began, and sunset was before school was out - more or less - in the middle of winter. But then, that city (in BC, and nowhere near as far north as that province gets) - is rather more arctic in every sense of the word. But then, that corner also opted out of time changes, so ... the rest of the province is catching up :)