Markey wants to make clock change permanent

After you change your clocks forward today, Ed Markey hopes you’ll never have to set them back.

The Massachusetts senator and a bipartisan group of colleagues reintroduced legislation this week that would make Daylight Saving Time permanent — meaning sunstarved Bay Staters who suffer through 4:15 p.m. winter sunsets could enjoy extended evening daylight year-round.

“It just makes the corners of people’s mouths turn upwards. It makes it possible for people to start to talk about planning outdoor activities, taking longer walks in the sunshine,” Markey told reporters on Saturday. “It’s something that helps I just think the mood of — the spirit of — Massachusetts and the country, and we desperately need it.”

Hawaii and most of Arizona

avoid the process of springing forward and falling back by staying in standard time year-round. Another 15 states have filed legislation or passed resolutions over the past four years that would keep them in Daylight Saving Time around the clock. Bills have been filed in Massachusetts to accomplish the same.

“We have a lot more to do to claim more time in the evening,” Markey said. “There’s a real movement out there in order to accomplish that.”

Cosponsors from across the aisle include Republican U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida.

But the Florida legislature voted to make Daylight Saving Time permanent in 2018, and now the Sunshine State and others require a federal statute to actually make the change.

Rubio called the time change “senseless” in a recent tweet calling to

“#LockTheClock.”

“Americans could use a little more sunshine after a long winter and an entire year of staying indoors amid the coronavirus pandemic,” Scott said.

Shifting daylight hours later can have some practical and physical benefits. Studies have shown increases in pedestrian and cyclist activity during Daylight Standard Time, and reductions in car crashes and car accidents involving pedestrians and wildlife, according to a press release from Markey’s office. A 2015 Brookings Institution study found that evening robberies dropped by 27% when clocks sprung forward.

The bill would come with a downside for early risers in Massachusetts who would see winter sunrises pushed to about 8 a.m. from 7 a.m.

Daylight Saving Time begins at 2 a.m. today and ends on Nov. 7.