Today, the Department of Transportation continues to oversee standard time due to its historical and contemporary importance in transportation and associated commercial activity. 6 Nonetheless, DST is observed uniformly across the nation except in American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Hawaii, and most of Arizona. 6 While State governments cannot independently change time zones or the length of DST, they can exempt themselves from DST, independent of DOT authority or permission. 6 7 Motivated by transportation improvements, this act mandated standard time within the existing time zones and established a permanent system of uniform DST, including the dates and times for twice yearly transitions. 4 5 6ĭaylight Saving Time (DST) was enacted as a legal requirement by the Uniform Time Act of 1966. 5 When the Department of Transportation was created by Congress in 1966, it was assigned “the responsibility of regulating, fostering, and promoting widespread and uniform adoption and observance of standardized time” within each time zone. 4 However, the need for coordination among all transportation modes became increasingly important after World War II. 4 3 That year, five time zones were officially adopted as the US entered World War I: the Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, and Alaska zones, all of which are still in use today. 3 In 1918, the federal organization in charge of railroad regulation - the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) - was given the power to address coordination concerns. 2īecause the development of standardized time was transportation-driven, the government coordination of time zones was handled by transportation agencies. 1 As a result, the major railroad companies began to operate on a coordinated system of four time zones starting in 1883. 2 Due to this lack of time standardization, train scheduling proved difficult to coordinate, resulting in missed connections and collisions. 2 With the proliferation of railroads, faster travel became possible across large geographies, and travelers could sometimes arrive at an earlier local time than they had departed. 1 The resulting time differences between adjacent towns and cities were not critical when it took days to travel from place to place.
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