Tom Wells said:If you look at time zones, the divide between eastern/central would naturally fall on the Miss. River.
There should be another time zone divide running through about Albany, New York for everything east of that.
Instead, we have a disproportionately large "eastern" time zone that reaches way out west.
In the middle of zones , there's not much of an issue, but at the edges there is dissatisfaction.
Sorry, but this post has been bothering me since I first read it.
First of all, why would a time zone follow a natural boundry, when all other times zone borders follow political boundries? I mean OK, sure the Mississippi River may be "one" natural boundry, but where would we put the next one, and the next one after that? How about over the oceans where there are no natural boundries? And what about metropolitan areas like St. Louis, or Minneapolis St. Paul? I dont think these places would take too kindly to having a time zone smash strait through their metro.
Second, "this is what lead me to actually post" So we should draw a line "somewhere around Albany NY" because the eastern timezone is too large? Using the line of Albany "We could go with the Hudson River to use a natural boundry", even if you completely ignore the Atlantic Time Zone starting 315-330miles to the east, making it way to small an area for its own time zone. Again, would the people of Boston, or say Manhattan "Techincally east of the Hudson" be OK with now shifting an hour off the rest of the east coast? What about commuters from NJ, etc? If anything the boundry should return East. After all, Detroit used it political influence to shift into the Eastern Time Zone so it could be on the same time as New York. "What that has to do with building cars is beyond me" Even Chicago considered it, but realized it just wouldnt work.
To try to return to the origonal thread, I agree with the posters that say AZ should be fully included in the Mountain Zone to resolve all of these time issues. I could swear that I read somewhere the reason AZ didnt switch was due something with energy consumption. But frankly, I have as much knowledge on the AZ subject as some one from AZ has about the East.