
Would You Ride a Bus from SF to LA If You Had Your Own Bed? - curtis
http://gizmodo.com/would-you-ride-a-bus-from-sf-to-la-if-you-could-sleep-t-1771921091
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ngoel36
I once took SF -> NYC red-eyes every Sunday for four months in a lie-flat seat
(and back home every Thursday). All my friends and fellow consultants pitied
my tremendous commute, but truth told I loved it - it was the furthest to time
travel I had ever come.

I hardly remember a single flight - a Dramamine, eye mask, and ear plugs
allowed me to pass out before take off and wake up in Manhattan.

In sum, I'd absolutely take this - if I could board at 10th & Market around
midnight and wake up in Santa Monica bright and early, I've wasted absolutely
no waking hours (as opposed to at least 3.5 hours wasted end-to-end: Uber from
home to SFO, security, taxiing, plane, taxiing, Uber from LAX to destination).

I, of course, can fall asleep just about anywhere - I can see how this would
be somebody else's worst nightmare if they couldn't.

~~~
GuiA
I hope I can one day have a self driving car show up at my doorstep in San
Francisco on a Friday night, hop in, fall asleep, and wake up in Seattle, at a
friend's doorstep, on the Saturday morning - and do the reverse to head back
to work on Monday.

Even just sleeping in a car instructed to drive along the coast all night long
would be delightful.

~~~
nerfhammer
This is why everyone is going to live in a self-driving RV.

The first thing that everyone is going to want in a self-driving car is a bed.
And after that, a bathroom.

Soon everyone is going to live in an RV in their employers' parking lot,
occasionally to leave on short trips.

~~~
bbcbasic
It could cross with Tinder and Uber so that you could hail a ride, a ride and
a nights kip all at once.

~~~
nerfhammer
> a nights kip

Is that what the kids are calling it now?

~~~
dcposch
lol no

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msravi
It's amusing to see this as something of a novelty. In India, buses like these
ply regularly[1] (for example between Bangalore and Chennai, or Bangalore and
Hyderabad) and are pretty popular. But then, the reason for the popularity
might be the fact that flight tickets (arriving at approx. the same time in
the morning) cost about 3x that of a sleeper bus service[2]. WiFi isn't
included though.

1\.
[http://www.ksrtc.in/AWATAROnline/jqreq.do?hiddenAction=Handl...](http://www.ksrtc.in/AWATAROnline/jqreq.do?hiddenAction=HandleTopDestinations&from=Bangalore&to=Chennai&hiddenStartPlaceID=41&hiddenEndPlaceID=276)
2\.
[https://www.cleartrip.com/flights/itinerary/6830699ffb-d1f9-...](https://www.cleartrip.com/flights/itinerary/6830699ffb-d1f9-4a08-ae85-5f41517cc76f/review)

~~~
mc32
It's not that it's novel. It's that it might work despite the nature of the
economy. That's to say, buses were a not uncommon mode of inter-city travel up
and till the late 50's after that cars dominated and left cheap buses (and
passenger rail) behind.

So, most Americans of upper lower class and above more or less dismissed buses
as only something really poor people, some students and geriatrics used.

Buses, in most people's minds had had their golden age, peak bus was behind
us. So, in that atmosphere betting on buses is bold.

It's like someone betting on airlines in some poor region (it's bold but with
the right circumstance, it might work).

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vacri
As a tourist in CA in 2009, I had to catch a train from LA to SF. I was
stunned to find that a train service for these two heavily-populated
metropolises only ran every second day. Had to catch a bus to Bakersfield to
get a connecting train. Different story on the right coast, where inter-city
trains are much more part of life (though yes, the distances are generally
smaller).

> _Why would you sleep on a bus for six-and-a-half hours when you could sleep
> on a plane for one hour? Well, um, hmmmmm. I’m not actually sure._

Because the time from take-off to landing is only one hour, but the time to
"catch a plane from X to Y" is considerably more - getting to the airport
(usually not in a convenient location), going through check-in/luggage and
security, boarding, alighting, luggage collection, getting from the airport to
your destination... whereas buses tend to start and finish in the centre of
town, where there's usually easy transport everywhere else.

~~~
cjensen
That's not correct -- the Coast Starlight runs daily from Oakland/Emeryville
to Los Angeles. Amtrak hates to run non-daily trains.

The twin problems of the route are (1) the train is very late very often and
(2) the route is inefficient (because the geography is inconvenient) and takes
all day to traverse.

~~~
vacri
Perhaps things have changed, or perhaps there was an interruption to the
schedule when I was there? The 'every second day' thing was from the ticket
seller at Union Station in LA.

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zippergz
Not a chance. It's a short, easy, and cheap flight. The airport is a pain, but
not enough to extend the trip by that much just to avoid it.

~~~
ant6n
It's overnight. Since you sleep then, you waste close to zero waking hours.

With flying, which takes an hour itself, you have to add airport transfers,
security, and expected delays, all during waking hours.

That said, maybe this is not the best city pair to start (?)

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bpchaps
Absolutely. There's nothing like a chance to sit back and just code while the
world passes by. I highly recommend a laptop/book/sketchpad and a trip on the
amtrak over the course of a couple days to relieve a lot of stresses. This is
just a tiny burst of the same idea, depending on the hours. I'm doing the trip
to NYC pretty soon on it, actually. :)

Not really sure why the author thinks this is somewhat of an outlandish idea,
honestly.

~~~
mdorazio
I would love to do Amtrak, but it is just so horribly slow and not at all
cheap for as slow as it is (at least in CA). LA to San Jose takes 10 hours on
Amtrak, and tickets start at $60 for a plain seat. That's almost double the
drive time and almost double the gas cost, or only about $20 cheaper than
flying.

~~~
bpchaps
Well, for what it's worth, none of the people I talked to went on it expecting
it to be the fastest fast, especially with cost considered. Lots of folk there
just wanted to reflect on life in some shape or another.

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reustle
This is very common throughout Southeast Asia. I did it multiple times
recently but a few of us would always end up discussing how we would fare if
we were in an accident

~~~
tracker1
Considering the mass ratio, assuming you'd most likely hit a much lighter
vehicle, pretty well most likely.

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ihaveajob
Heck yeah. My mother in law does the Megabus shuffle twice a week because
she's a trooper, but this would definitely be a wanted upgrade. Too bad the
endpoint down south is Santa Monica and not LA proper, with many more options
for the final leg.

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ctstover
I would love to see this catch on all over the country. There always have
been, and always will be trade offs that often do make rail travel (in the
abstract) superior to commercial air. 75 year long story short, the
implementation in the US is broken, and will never be fixed. This should be
marketed, and envisioned as a competitor to rail and existing bus lines.

I also think they should research route combinations that have terrible or no
commercial air options. There are hundreds of these. Think about flying
between two tier 3-4 cites. Or places where people take road trips to popular
destinations from tier 1 cites. For that matter you might do well with
families.

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rdl
I definitely wouldn't use it all the time (sometimes I'd fly; sometimes I'd
drive...maybe once or twice I'd take the train), but it would be a nice
option, and I could see using it sometimes.

The best use case is if you are injured or otherwise unable to fly (scuba
diving?)...this presumably is more comfortable than a car, once flying is
ruled out. If the schedule worked out perfectly, I'd consider using it instead
of driving/flying otherwise -- if it saves a night in a hotel, could be a win.

~~~
nradov
Scuba divers are a very limited market. There are only a few thousand at most
who dive along the California coast with any regularity, and few of those need
to travel long distances. The standard recommendation is to allow 24 hours
between diving and flying, but in reality if you've done a proper ascent it's
safe to go straight from the dive boat to the airport. I've done that several
times.

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kriro
Just traveling somewhere while you sleep sounds pretty great (since you waste
no time). The problem with doing this for anything business related is that I
kind of want to take a shower, brush my teeth etc. after getting up. Not sure
how that would be handled, otherwise it sounds like a pretty great thing for
any two places that are connected by roughly a good nights sleep
(Berlin<->Paris).

Maybe AirBnBs at the hop on/off points could offer morning cleanup as a
service?

~~~
ant6n
The Berlin-Paris overnight train had showers in the first class car. Alas it
was cancelled last year.

Public swimming pools have showers, why couldn't lounges at a bus station.
Included in the slightly premium lie-flat service.

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rwhitman
If silicon valley put it's weight against a new investment boom in mass
transportation (of any kind) it would do this country a world of good.

~~~
aetherson
It has. The twin bets are called Uber and driverless cars.

I know that's not what you meant, but that's absolutely what silicon valley
had put its weight behind to solve that problem.

~~~
rwhitman
I really want to see what could happen if we could take the principles and
lessons of uber and automated vehicles and apply them to mass transit use
cases, like on-demand buses to fill in situations where rail lines are
deficient, agile new strategies for restoring or expanding rail service in
places it's been neglected etc.

Use the knowledge gained from the uber on-demand logistics revolution to fill
in the gaps in car-free transportation options to get us on par with europe.
And so forth

~~~
RobertKerans
The Uber CEO described his vision for a 'perfect uber' last year, and what he
described was a bus. I'm sure he sees it differently, as some revolutionary
concept, but the description was definitely of a bus on a loop.

~~~
RobertKerans
Heh, I know what he means, but the quote still makes me want to give him a
shake and say 'this is a bus, the thing you're describing is a bus'

> Uber CEO Travis Kalanick often talks about his dream of the perfect Uber
> trip. "It's the perpetual trip, the trip that never ends," he said at the
> Digital-Life-Design conference in Europe last October. "The driver picks one
> passenger up, picks another passenger up, drops off the first passenger, but
> then picks up passenger number three and drops off passenger number two."

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dmritard96
I don't particularly care if its a bus or a self driving car, but without a
doubt a lot of places where we fly for a quick trip we may decide to drive. I
am more compelled by self driving cars with beds though as they will still
solve all the annoying last mile problems, time independent/flexible, and be a
bit more private.

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_ZeD_
well... it's my routine... with a train

[http://www.trenitalia.com/tcom/Altri-treni/Intercity-
Notte](http://www.trenitalia.com/tcom/Altri-treni/Intercity-Notte)

~~~
ant6n
pics or it didn't happen

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pink_dinner
I did this in Korea. It even had wifi.

Not as comfortable as you might think.

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bitwize
Do the power outlets _work_?

Better than even money even the ones near my Greyhound seat are busted
whenever I travel.

~~~
swang
Or fumbling in the dark for the outlet and gambling that you don't feel
something sticky. In my Megabus experiences anyways.

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megablast
> But even the worst airport and vehicle traffic experiences in the world
> wouldn’t take 6.5 hours door-to-door.

Has this guy ever used an airport before? It certainly can take a lot longer
than that.

~~~
ghshephard
But the type of equipment failure/missing vehicle that will result in extended
delays can happen to a bus as well.

Presuming everything is on time - you take 45 minutes to get to SFO, 60
minutes before your flight, 90 minute flight, 30 minutes to get out of LAX,
and then 30 minutes to Santa Monica. That means, normally, you are looking at
4 1/2 hours, door to door. Most of it pretty miserable airplane travel, hassle
going through airport.

I would totally sign up for the sleeper bus.

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JeremyBanks
Does the bed have a seatbelt?

Then no, thank you, I'd rather not increase the risk even further.

~~~
tracker1
It's likelu less risk than a mid-size or smaller car with a seatbelt, because
of the relative mass of the bus and the other most-likely vehicles that would
be in an impact collision.

