| | |  Travel & Outdoors | December 2009 
Clocks Will Match on Both Sides of Border
 Sandra Dibble - San Diego Union-Tribune
go to original
December 28, 2009
| | Mexican law ends 1-hour difference | |
An hour’s difference between Tijuana and San Diego for four weeks out of the year has been confounding cross-border travelers since 2007. But that will no longer be the case, thanks to a law passed by Mexico’s Congress this month.
Communities along the U.S.-Mexico border will now be synchronized throughout the year under the measure sponsored by Gastón Luken Garza, a freshman member of Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies from Tijuana.
“It makes sense for the community and anyone that goes across the border in any direction,” said Luken, a political independent elected this year to represent President Felipe Calderón’s National Action Party. “It makes life easier for people who work, study, visit on any side of the border.”
The cross-border time difference dates to March 2007, when the United States and Canada switched to a new daylight-saving schedule as an energy conservation measure. Mexico did not, remaining on the traditional schedule and switching to daylight-saving time three weeks later.
The time difference replayed that November, when Mexico returned to standard time a week before the United States and Canada. In 2008 and again this year, Tijuana and San Diego remained an hour apart for four weeks of the year, wreaking havoc on many cross-border schedules.
“The fact that it’s now uniform helps us a lot,” said Javier Martínez Luna, president of the Tijuana Maquiladora Association. “We’re one community along the border; the commercial relationship is very strong.”
At St. John’s Episcopal School in Chula Vista, where more than 40 percent of the student body is from Tijuana, “it can’t help but help us,” said John Goddard, the head of the school. Students from Tijuana had to get up an hour earlier each spring in order to get to school on time.
In Mexico City, there was little controversy about making the change, which will only affect border communities. The measure passed Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies on Dec. 10 with support from all political parties; only two members, from the leftist Workers Party, opposed it. On Dec. 15, support in the Senate was unanimous.
Luken said the change will mean energy savings for Mexico. And the thousands who cross the border each day “will share the same time, no matter what month of the year we are.”
Sandra Dibble: (619) 293-1716; sandra.dibble(at)uniontrib.com |
|
| |
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us