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Cabin releases 2nd-gen fleet of sleeper bus from SF to LA and back
- martinald 7y agoOnly seems to be one day a week it runs per direction?
- nrp 7y agoThey appear to be initially targeting the customer who wants to take a weekend trip to LA from SF or vice versa. That’s a high volume route, which also makes it super competitive for air travel. It seems a round trip flight costs on the order of a one way Cabin bus ride, so I assume they are targeting customers who have chosen not to fly for personal reasons.
- dmurray 7y agoOr just comfort. They're definitely marketing it as a luxury option, at least in comparison to a regular flight or a regular bus.
- 14 7y agoFlights in Canada are very expensive. If they could perfect the experience and expand the market I could see this working well. They could sell "Travel Across Canada" all while you sleep. Wake up in a new location each day. All of Canada in a week. No going to the air port and all that mess just meet back at the bus at a certain hour.
- Scoundreller 7y agoA landcruise. I like it. A european company did something like this: Busabout. They ran a circuitous route (or two) around W. Europe. You'd buy a 30d pass and hop on/off wherever you wanted. You could continue, back-track, whatever you wanted. Doubt they had sleepers. Kinda like the Eurail passes I guess.
- pseingatl 7y agoThe DR did it as well: Terrabus. But no overnight trips.
- servercobra 7y agoYeah, which sucks as someone living in LA. The last thing I want is a Sun -> Fri trip to SF..
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoExcept for the 'vice versa' part of your comment. The bus on Thursday only leaves from from SF, so it's only the SF to LA weekend trip that is supported.
- m463 7y agoMaybe it's a proof of concept/test and more will be planned if successful?
- colordrops 7y agoI tried a sleeper bus in China and to be frank I was scared to death the whole ride. Now traffic in the US is safer but by no means perfect. It just takes one idiot to take out a bus full of sleeping passengers. I don't think I could sleep.
- fiter 7y agoWhether you're sleeping or awake, can you do anything about an accident while you're riding in the bus?
- jws 7y agoSleep with your feet forward so you don’t break your neck in a crash. (Advice given to Sara Hickman she she started touring as a musician).
- colordrops 7y agoI'm not comfortable while awake either. The point is that I won't be able to sleep, so there's no point in taking a sleeper bus.
- Scoundreller 7y agoTake a rear-facing seat if available.
- latchkey 7y agoI'm in Vietnam and we call them rolling coffins. There is a major accident daily somewhere in the country with them. Usually a head-on collision with another vehicle. Usually a factor of drivers being high on meth to stay awake, or being unlicensed or the pure insanity of the roads here.
- leoedin 7y agoSleeping on a Vietnamese sleeping bus is definitely the most terrifying nights sleep of my life. You wake up at 2am, look out the front window and see a truck powering straight at you, before one of the drivers swerves at the last minute. Saying that, Vietnamese sleeping busses are terrifying because Vietnamese roads are terrifying. Most Western countries have relatively safe roads - bus crashes are really rare events.
- tathougies 7y agoWow, it's almost like there's demand for a high-speed, non-driving land route between LA and SF. If only we had a fixed route land vehicle that could provide a smooth, direct route that had enough space for people to do things like sleep, rest, and use the bathroom. Maybe I'll call this idea 'a high-speed train' and propose that California build one between LA and SF... oh wait.
- tryitnow 7y agoI'm all for high speed rail, but why is it so expensive and why does it take so long to build? China has been able to build out a high speed network fairly quickly. Why is it that? Is it just because they're cutting corners?
- selectodude 7y agoBecause China can tell you “hey you don’t live here anymore” and plow right through neighborhoods and farms. Our property rights in the US are pretty absolute.
- TehCorwiz 7y agoTwo words “eminent domain”. The government, both federal and state (depending on the state) can absolutely obtain your land with zero recourse. They’ll pay you for it, but you don’t get a choice.
- ceejayoz 7y agoThere’s plenty of political recourse, especially when you’re taking property from thousands of people in one project.
- selectodude 7y agoThe paying for land is a huge cost center for massive construction projects. Especially ones that require a 400 mile unbroken piece of land. Not to mention you can tie even eminent domain up in litigation for years.
- KingFelix 7y agoSeems expensive, a flight could be cheaper?
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago"1.6x smoother than a maglev bullet train"? There aren't even any "maglev bullet" trains in service. (Unless they're referring to the Shanghai Transrapid, which is bumpy as hell but takes only about 10 minutes.)
- 1v1id 7y agoWhat do you mean? The Japanese bullet train is maglev, and frankly I was under the assumption that almost all "bullet" trains need to use maglev to get those kinds of speeds. https://www.jrailpass.com/blog/maglev-bullet-train https://www.jrailpass.com/blog/maglev-bullet-train
- CHY872 7y agoBullet trains are sadly not maglev. They actually don't go _that_ fast (180-200MPH-ish is common), but look incredibly sleek compared to European high speed trains due to the aerodynamics of dealing with the large number of tunnels that Japan has.
- thirtyseven 7y agoFrom your own link: "In 2009, the Maglev system was approved and entered commercial construction. The linear Chuo Shinkansen line is planned to link Tokyo and Nagoya by the year 2027."
- 1v1id 7y agoOh, gotcha. Thanks!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pseingatl 7y agoThe Shanghai maglev train is a smooth ride.
- gok 7y agoIt's twice the price of a flight, and with planes you can pick between 3 major airports in SFBA and 5 in LA, which are probably closer to the locations you're really going between.
- a13n 7y ago2x the price and 4x the duration. I think the innovation is that instead of dealing with the hassle of going to the airport, going through security, and sitting in a cramped seat, you just spend a good night's sleep traveling.
- seandougall 7y agoDon't underestimate that hassle when comparing durations. I once dropped my spouse off at OAK, drove down the 5, and picked her up at BUR. She had time to eat dinner at the airport, but otherwise she really didn't get there much before me.
- refurb 7y agoWere you driving 120 mph? Airport to airport it should take maybe 2.5 hours (1 hr before flight + 1.5 for the flight) versus the 5 hr to drive between the two.
- tedd4u 7y agoRefer to MythBusters episode 221, "Traffic Tricks.": https://mythresults.com/traffic-tricks https://mythresults.com/traffic-tricks For journeys shorter than 400 miles, driving is faster than flying. PLAUSIBLE The Build Team had a race of 380 miles (610 km) from San Francisco to Los Angeles, between Tory on a plane, and Kari and Grant driving. The bottlenecks of air travel (arriving early to get through security, waiting for the plane to start boarding, retrieving luggage at the destination, and renting a car) delayed Tory significantly. Kari and Grant had fewer such delays, but did have to stop for gas and food at one point, and traffic in and near the larger cities did slow them down. Kari and Grant arrived at their destination after 5h 33m; Tory was slightly faster, at 5h 25m. Because of the close result and variables that could alter the result either way, this myth was declared plausible.
- jonknee 7y ago> During our one-year pilot, road turbulence was a frequent guest complaint. Cabin G2 introduces our proprietary bump-canceling technology, Cabin Cloud. Beneath select cabins, a suite of sensors, electric motors and control algorithms instantly respond to road imperfections by moving a guest’s bed up or down to control the vibration. The technology transforms a bump that would take a passenger out of the deepest sleep, into a bump that they hardly notice. This reads like parody (road turbulence?!). I haven't done it in a while, but isn't I-5 between LA and SF is a pretty normal interstate in terms of ride quality? They make it sound like an off road experience. I could see emphasizing a quiet ride, but just about any vehicle should be a smooth one.
- dmode 7y agoYeah, I-5 is smooth as hell and getting smoother by the day. But I believe buses feel bumps in the pavement to bridge transitions
- seandougall 7y agoA bus would likely have to stay in the right lane, which is still pretty torn up by truck traffic in big stretches.
- cardiffspaceman 7y agoI've seen buses in the high speed lane and if they keep up with the flow of traffic I don't mind.
- a3n 7y agoI've seen signs that say no trucks in the left lane, buses ok. Buses can usually accelerate better than trucks. And trucking companies often govern their trucks. My company governs us to 65mph.
- 01100011 7y agoIt varies. The trucks tear up the slow lane pretty quickly but they're doing some repaving lately. In between LA and the grapevine, if my memory serves, it's pretty shitty, but they're doing a lot of construction through Santa Clarita/Valencia so maybe I'm just remembering that.
- dangerboysteve 7y agoI'm thinking a Wework on wheels. We're not a bus company we're a tech company!
- z2 7y agoYeah, this part is what got me: > "... Over the course of hundreds of trips, our software has mapped an optimal way to drive for your comfort. Combining this unique dataset with real-time tracking of vehicle stability, speed and location, Cabin Drive instructs each driver how to safely drive for optimal ride quality based on route and road conditions."
- gizmo385 7y ago> optimal way to drive Isn't it basically just a straight interstate shot for the vast majority of the trip between SF and LA?
- gorbypark 7y agoI think if you were focused on driving smoothly as to not wake sleeping passengers you could do a lot with software. It would be pretty easy to use an accelerometer to map road conditions and tell drivers that bumps are coming up and to slow down, or to switch lanes to avoid this pot hole, even while driving the same route.
- ilaksh 7y agoCan they order a whole bunch more and find a place to park them in SF near a gym? Then they can charge $1000 per month per spot.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- blisterpeanuts 7y agoBefore the era of ride sharing, many people dismissed inter-city transports like this one as impractical. But now, with Uber/Lyft, it's not at all unreasonable to take a luxurious sleeper between SF and LA and get where you need to be quite easily. Not having to deal with a TSA strip searches, no multi-tools, 23" or smaller carryons, and now "pay extra to carry on, pay extra to reserve a seat". Buses and trains are sounding better and better, and this tech savvy system sounds really good, especially once they can bring the price down to a competitive level.
- denverkarma 7y agoHonest question, are men allowed? I assume so because I didn’t see anywhere that they aren’t, but I didn’t see a single male in the marketing images, and it has a feminine-looking brand, so now I’m slightly unsure. I’m assuming it’s just their target demographic is young single (white?) professional women, but the homogeneity of the marketing images honestly tripped me up a bit. Edit: on further examination I do see an image with a guy in a red track suit outside of one of their busses, I missed that the first time. Still, to be honest I think I’d be intimidated to book a trip and be the only male on the bus. Role reversal, I guess :/
- lvs 7y agoIt's not a bus. It's a second-generation groundcraft.
- jackvalentine 7y agoI love the idea and if it were available on the 7 hour drive I do on the regular I'd use it but some of this marketing copy is extraordinary! > Whenever the vehicle experiences an event that will create vertical acceleration for our resting guests (the feeling of “bumpiness”) aka whenever the vehicle goes over a bump?
- objektif 7y agoSilicon Valleying to the max. Another event that may create vertical acceleration is being sucked into the sky by aliens. The question is what happens to the unresting guest when such event takes place?
- jackvalentine 7y agoSomewhere buried in their T&C is surely a disclaimer that their patented reduction of vertical acceleration technology is limited two mitigating the accelerative force that would move the captive primate (you) two inches.
- objektif 7y agoThrow your insults at me, won't change the fact that their descriptions sound like there written by wework level scam artists (like you).
- mherdeg 7y agoThis marketing copy is great! I giggled at "Real, Flushing Toilet". Somebody put some love into this and it definitely shows.
- mherdeg 7y agoI'm a little confused. * They operate a single service once a week on a round trip from SF to LA that departs SF 11pm Friday and departs LA 11pm Sunday? And they have no published timetable beyond Dec 2020? * The bus has twenty total berths and each one costs about $100? Five of the berths feature the "Cloud Bump Cancellation System" thing that's being talked up on the ridecabin.com/product page? * So do they have one total bus? * They are selling about $4k per week of bus tickets? Does that cover the operating expenses of their very nice looking booking system and the regulatory obligations associated with being a bus company? * What happens if something happens to that one bus -- does everyone get some other kind of bus ticket or what? The terms of transport seems to say ( https://www.ridecabin.com/termsoftransportationservices https://www.ridecabin.com/termsoftransportationservices ) that they'll try to buy you a bus ticket if their bus isn't working. So ... if the bus is broken down you probably don't know until 11pm and then, how long does it take to get an alternate bus ticket? Where do those backup buses leave from and what timetables do they typically use and how do you get there?
- ghouse 7y agoThey're still building out their second generation bus fleet.
- mherdeg 7y agoDoes the same driver do the Friday trip south and the Sunday trip north? Do they get paid for their time on Saturday too? Does Cabin buy them a hotel for Sat/Sun? (Ha, do they park the bus somewhere and sleep on it?) Is it the same person every week or do they have a bunch of drivers? Is this a full time job for the driver or, what else do they do during the week / how do they get health insurance and pay rent?
- jmpman 7y agoThe concept has just one niche I can see (besides people who are scared of flying)... getting into downtown SF before 8am without the chance of your flight being delayed due to fog. If you absolutely need to be at a meeting at 8am, currently you’re flying in the night before, grabbing an Uber from SFO to a hotel generally close to your morning meeting, hoping you’ll get a good night sleep and then dealing with the morning commute. You’re paying at least $300 in addition to the flight. Of course the above scenario is just the tip of why I’m so excited about self driving RVs. Hop in at 8pm in your home town, work, watch TV until you’re ready to go to bed, wake up at your normal 6am, shower, get dressed, and step outside in front of the office at 7:45am. The RV departs, maybe driving itself “home”, while you work. At the end of the day, catch an Uber to the airport for a quick flight home... to be met at the airport by your RV, which whisks you home. You’re gone for under 24 hours from home, and were able to put in an 8+ hour day. Or, you take the RV all the way home, arriving at home by 8am. I’d buy one in a heartbeat if the price was around $0.20/mile. I might even consider using such an RV during a week long trip to the bay - using the RV as my hotel... having it drive out to Tracy each evening and parking in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Which in a strange way will alleviate Bay Area housing shortage - when you’re living in an RV, do you care how far away it’s parked from work if it’s self driving?
- ummwhat 7y agoThe thing that kills this niche is booking a sleeper car ticket on the capitol corridor. Amtrak does all this but better. Train is quieter, there's a full dining car with meals cooked in a legit kitchen, more space to walk around, fantastic view in the observation car. Only thing they don't do right is advertising. Did you know the sleeper car comes with 3 meals a day? I didn't. On reflection the other issue is that it doesn't go direct into downtown. But you can transfer to BART at Richmond so same same.
- AndyMcConachie 7y agoI love taking Amtrak, but my god the food is terrible.
- 7y ago
- CaliforniaKarl 7y agoThe Amtrak Coast Starlight departs LA Union Station around 10AM, getting in to San Jose around 8PM. I wish there was a train service that departed Los Angeles around 9PM, got in to San Jose at 7AM, and then expressed to San Francisco for arrival by 8.
- DeepYogurt 7y agoThe bus is only about $20 cheaper though. For $20 I'll take the train.
- parsimo2010 7y agoThe claim that their bus is 1.6x smoother than a train is impossible, and indicative of marketing taking priority over honest metrics. How is 1.6x smoother impossible? Imagine a maglev train has bumps with a peak amplitude of 2 cm. Then 1.6x of that is 3.2 cm. So to be 1.6x smoother they would need their cabin to reduce bumps to -1.2 cm, which is impossible. The truth is often the inverse of this, such as, “maglev trains are 1.6x bumpier than our bus.” That means that your bus is 62.5% as bumpy as a maglev train, but this doesn’t sound as good to the marketing folks. For any positive metric it is impossible to be more than 100% less than something. Cabin either have people with poor numeracy skills, or they willfully used inaccurate wording to make their bus sound better. It makes me trust the rest of their marketing spiel 1.6x less.
- Svip 7y agoI am more impressed to hear that California apparently have incredibly smooth roads. I mean otherwise, they'd need some suspension that would relinquish all control of the bus itself. Or are they only referring to the seating? I mean they can have independent suspension, that might achieve that.
- parsimo2010 7y agoThey were talking about their special suspended cabins, which there are only a few of on each bus. The regular cabins are not as smooth.
- chiph 7y agoThey may have licensed the Bose Ride system, which is sold to commercial truck drivers to smooth out bumps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_G9GCpWAcM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_G9GCpWAcM Edit: Looks like Bose has sold it to Clearmotion: https://www.clearmotion.com/active-suspension-seat https://www.clearmotion.com/active-suspension-seat
- gizmo385 7y agoThe website refers to the cancellation technology as "their proprietary technology" so I'm not sure if it's licensed.
- awiesenhofer 7y agoMeanwhile, in austria: https://www.priestmangoode.com/project/new-intercity-and-nightjet/ https://www.priestmangoode.com/project/new-intercity-and-nig...
- mmjaa 7y agoLove these trains ..
- modi15 7y agoSleeper buses are huge in India. The railways are choked because they are run by the government. For overnight travels outside your city, sleeper buses are the most convenient options for the vast majority of the people - cheaper than flight, and more accesible/cleaner than the train. There are multiple private operators which provide this service. Personally, I dont have too hard a time sleeping in one. It also offers more privacy than a typical sitting bus or if you are a couple you can book two beds. There have been a couple of accidents though and people have died. Not too sure if the accident rate is more than normal sitting buses - sleeper buses arent perceived more 'risky' in India as compared to the siting ones.
- ganitarashid 7y agoThe Achilles heel of this entire concept is that a sleep deprived, tired driver earning minimum wage is driving you through the night. Doesn’t matter how luxurious the interior is.
- synaesthesisx 7y agoWhile this is a cool concept (especially the suspended, likely over-engineered sleeping platforms), I can’t see sense in the business model with this type of pricing. Cabin charges $120 each way for an 8 hour bus ($240 round trip), while you can get a round-trip flight for less than half that with any of the major carriers ($107 for LAX - SFO, $91 for LAX-OAK RT). As someone that regularly travels between LA and SF, I would rather fly Delta at half the cost and a fraction of the time. Time is money, and it doesn’t make sense to charge more for an 8 hour bus than an hour-ish flight, especially when the majority of travelers would rather get from point A->B as fast as possible.
- maelito 7y agoMaybe reduce the carbon footprint ?
- atomwaffel 7y agoI’m not sufficiently familiar with the geography of SF or LA – how does the door-to-door time and cost compare when you account for the fact that most trips don’t actually start and end at an airport? I’d much rather catch a sleeper bus/train in the city centre in the evening, sleep for 7–8 hours (something I’d be doing anyway) and wake up in another city centre the next morning with a full day ahead of me than deal with the hassle of travelling to an airport, going through security, killing time at the gate, and travelling back to the city centre at my destination.
- garmaine 7y agoMost trips don’t actually start and end at the bus depot either.
- atomwaffel 7y agoExactly, that’s why I’m wondering about the door-to-door times for a typical trip, and I don’t know enough about American cities to give a qualified answer myself. My expectation would be that they’re more central and less time-consuming than most airports. Then again, my experience with bus stations so far has also been that they’re even less inviting places than most airports and not usually as well connected either.
- ulfw 7y agoI love how pointless some of their Apple-style Marketing blurb is. “1.6x smoother than a Maglev train” (which I highly doubt because they don’t have connection to the ground and ‘fly’ above the guard rail but whatever) How many Californians have ever been on a Maglev (such as the Shanghai Transrapid). How does anyone know what 1.6x smoother means compared to something uncomparable
- thunderbong 7y agoI think this mouse scroll capturing behavior beats Powerpoint
- projektfu 7y agoI’d be satisfied with executive-class buses like they have in Mexico. Comfortable seats and useful timetables. I’m a veteran of overnight train service between Chicago and Pittsburgh. One thing I noticed is that cheap flights are still a huge waste of time. If you fly out Friday night, you spend all evening in airports, risk getting bumped off an overbooked flight, and arrive tired at a hotel you have to pay for as well. On the way back you need an early enough flight that you aren’t dead at work on Monday. On the overnight train you hang with friends near the station, hop on the train and go to sleep, waking up fresh on Saturday morning. You have the whole weekend to do whatever and you hop on the train at the end of Sunday. Monday morning you arrive fresh, probably 20 minutes early for work.
- mmjaa 7y agoI've taken similar train rides as you describe, albeit all over Europe. Trains are a delightful way to travel - and as well, get some good work done. Some of my happiest code was written while castles and rivers and villages scrolled by on the window .. In my opinion the 'long slow travel .. while sleeping/working' method of getting around is far more preferable to the 'jet age tin-can' mode, no matter how far and fast. I'd happily take a train anywhere in the world, were such a thing feasible ..
- nlh 7y agoI agree with your sentiment entirely! One thing to point out - the ‘long slow travel while working’ mode is still possible even with tin cans. To wit: I just had one of my most focused, productive (and enjoyable!) coding sessions of my life on a Zurich -> SFO flight. It was a day flight, 12 hours long. I was lucky enough to have a bulkhead seat in economy and conditions were perfect - it was dark (enough), I had absolute focus, unlimited coffee that got refilled automatically ;) snacks, meals, zero phone calls/distractions, and good-enough WiFi. I’ve never felt 12 hours vanish so quickly (and code appear so fluidly ;)
- mmjaa 7y agoNice! Yeah .. I've found as I've aged, I really need scenery somewhere, scrolling by in the background, if I try to travel-work. I guess I get claustrophobic without it ..
- bdauvergne 7y agoThere is only 600 km between the two cities (I'm french distance between SF and LA was unknown to me before :) ), a normal train (200 km/h, with TGV it would be 2h and some) would take a bit much than 3 hours; with google map I only see fields, desert and mountains for nearly 550 km, why sleep in a bus ?
- kyralis 7y agoBecause Republicans hate public transit. (And, to be fair, we rather suck at infrastructure for a variety of complex reasons, which explains part of the Republican resistance to such projects.)
- rayiner 7y agoHigh speed trains are “public” transit in the very loosest sense. They are way too expensive to be used by ordinary people on a regular basis. The California HSR was supposed to be $80-100 each way. Multiply that by four for a family trip and compare it to the cost of driving. And even that price is optimistic. A trip from DC to New York on the NER booked a month out for my family, two adults two half-price kids, is $750 round trip. Driving is a fraction of that. That’s for a non-high-speed, already built line that recovered its capital costs decades ago. On a trip that’s half as long. HSR ends up being a heavily subsidized option for upper middle class people and business travelers. (Look at who is in a typical Acela or even Northeast Regional train.) So to be more precise, there is no HSR in California because (1) the fact that we suck at infrastructure projects makes it a very expensive proposition; (2) that taxpayer funded expense would go to benefitting a relatively small and well off set of people living in SF and LA. (Also, which “republicans?” California doesn’t have a single republican in elected statewide office.)
- rst 7y agoIn countries with real high speed rail, this is not the case. Tickets on Italian Freccia trains are comparable to US bus fares between major cities. Acela in the US is expensive because it competes with planes - and laughably slow by world standards (not much faster than trains ran on the same routes in the 1950s).
- test435 7y agoAwesome news
- calbear81 7y agoTheir 1st gen service offered quite a bit of luggage and equipment transport for free (bike or surfboard) so it was super interesting to me. You could get on Friday night and go to sleep wake up refreshed in Santa Monica, surf, get a hotel or what not. Party until Sunday night and then sleep and be in the office by 8am. No Uber rides needed necessarily and less wasted time getting to the airport on time etc.
- PaulHoule 7y agoI asked a friend of mine who lives in Ventura how he gets to Stanford and he told me that he takes the train -- and avoids most of So. Cal and the bay area.
- wdr1 7y agoI'm 6'6". Will I fit?
- anthony_barker 7y agoJapan has had something not quite as nice for 30 years. It runs ever night and is pretty cheap. Lots of public baths so you can shower when you arrive. Tokyo - Kyoto/Osaka