6 ms·

Overnight 'hotel train' could link San Francisco and Los Angeles

43 points by lxm 4y ago

negidius 4y ago
I love night trains. It's really convenient to be able to go to sleep in one place and wake up at my destination in the morning. Train stations tend to be in much more central locations compared to airports, and it's nice to not have to go through security.
- cyanf 4y ago
  It’s practically teleportation.
- teleforce 4y ago
  Night train is very popular around the world, and it's a hit with tourists because they can save extra day on hotel expense and travelling time. It's a kind of travelling hack. Japan Sunrise Night Train is extremely popular and tourist need to book them several weeks in advance to get a ticket [1]. You can use Japan Rail Pass card for the nobi-nobi economy seats but need to pay extra for the private compartments. [1] Night Trains: https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2356.html https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2356.html
  - sufficer 4y ago
    Night trains with amtrak are really expensive in USA. Can anyone point me in to some cheaper options? Either Canada or europe?
    - illirik 4y ago
      As an American sleeper train enthusiast, my recs are: - If you find yourself in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland, the Nightjet is IMHO the best sleeper train in the world on balance. Between very reasonable fares, high hotel rates in the cities it serves, and mostly new rolling stock, it's a bargain. - If you live on the East Coast or Midwestern US, there are several Amtrak services that are reasonably priced when booked well in advance (3-6 months). The City of New Orleans (from Chicago) or the silver services (two different NYC - Florida trains, but they take different routes through NC, SC, and GA) have much more reasonable fares than the Western routes. - You can often get a good deal on Via Rail in Canada; they still allow you to book a single berth, and they regularly release promo fares for specific dates. The deals are available at https://www.viarail.ca/en/offers/sleeper-plus-class-deals/ https://www.viarail.ca/en/offers/sleeper-plus-class-deals/ and you can scroll down to see the dates and routes that there are savings on. The best deals are from the major cities in Canada (especially Montreal) to points East on the Ocean - you can get a discount private cabin from e.g. Montreal to Halifax, but you're SOL if you want to go to Vancouver in anything other than a berth. Book a Corridor to get to Montreal. These are best booked close-in, unlike Amtrak. However, if you have the means, book a room(ette) on the Empire Builder in winter. It's simply incredible.
  - wenc 4y ago
    I think it depends how you look at it, but night trains in Japan are actually not that popular -- so much so they had to reduce routes so the Sunrise Seto became the only surviving night train (as pointed out in your linked article), which why it's hard to book. I actually wanted to book it from Osaka to Tokyo, but there were a number of hoops to jump through to book it from abroad with a JR Rail Pass that hadn't yet been exchanged, that I ended up just book another hotel night and then hopped on an morning Shinkansen to Tokyo.
    - claritise 4y ago
      Barely anyone takes the Sunrise Seto. I managed to easily book it while I was there. I really want to take it again when I am back, 100% quintessential Japanese bliss. I hope they never get rid of it.
- prawn 4y ago
  They should be available everywhere. Where they exist in Australia, it's pretty much only for luxury, hosted travel. The Adelaide-Melbourne service is seated and runs during the day. I think they're competing with freight which gets priority though.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  I used to take the night train between Shanghai and Beijing. It was ok, but train stations in China are not generally as central as they are in Europe/Japan (although usually better positioned than the states). The HSR stations are even less convenient in their locations (eg Beijing South vs Beijing main station), however, so now it’s a bit less convenient. The new HSR trains have replaced the night trains (no need for a bed on a four hour ride).
paxys 4y ago
> Vollebregt said Dreamstar’s service would be “more like a private jet company than a big airline,” focused on the specialized niche of “upscale, overnight, hotel train service.” > One-way tickets would cost about $300, $600 and $1,000, depending on the tier of room, which Vollebregt said is higher than typical airfare, but below other North American sleeper trains. I'm going to say this niche fits exactly 5 people in the state of California.
- CaptainNegative 4y ago
  $300 sounds pretty comparable to an overnight stay at a hotel room.
- lajupechere 4y ago
  This could maybe work if it was sf-Seattle. LA is too close
  - klyrs 4y ago
    Insert snark about socal traffic. But honestly rail travel in the US is obnoxiously slow and freight has priority resulting in maddening delays. As long as they don't wake up the passengers on arrival, and stay parked until a reasonable hour, this may be the only way to travel by rail and get there on time.
  - pulvinar 4y ago
    LA is 8 hours away by train -- fits nicely in one night's sleep. Seattle is a whole day (or 2 hours by plane).
    - the_mar 4y ago
      Why is US train travel so much slower than that in Russia of all places.
      - wpietri 4y ago
        In short, the car industry and car culture won out here. A lot of public transit is seen as for the poor and other disfavored groups. The US right complains endlessly about Amtrak subsidies, while somehow ignoring the half-trillion dollars (per Wikipedia) spent on the interstate system (plus lots more spending at the state for highways, etc).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bragr 4y ago
The problem everyone had with the overnight LA-SF bus was that the drive wasn't long enough for a proper night's sleep, if you could sleep at all bounced around in your bunk. Granted a train allows for better accommodation, but doesn't solve the underlying problem.
- quantified 4y ago
  It could go slow...
  - the_mar 4y ago
    Idk about you but I would usually need to shower and brush my teeth before business meetings. I doubt the trains would include functional showers
    - jhpaul 4y ago
      Amtrak sleepers have showers in the bedrooms and the roomettes share 2 per car.
    - jrmg 4y ago
      Regular Amtrak cars with sleeping cabins have functional showers right now.
      - the_mar 4y ago
        I know they exist, the one's I've seen are used to store towels and other things. By functional I mean really the kind you can shower in, with no pain. Has anyone actually tried them? how is the water pressure?
        jrmg 4y ago
        Pain? Like from them being too small or causing you to fall over or something? I’ve used them, they’re fine. IIRC quite large. I don’t remember them being amazing, so the water pressure was probably just at the ‘acceptable’ level. They have the usual drawbacks of shared showers - water and dirt creeping into the dry areas because people aren’t careful - so if I were designing a new luxury sleeping train car I’d try to get one per cabin, or maybe one per pair of cabins.
wkat4242 4y ago
They take 10 hours?? (10pm to 8am) It's not even 600km. Here in Spain I can travel the 800km from Barcelona to Madrid in 2.5 actual hours. Now this is a high speed train but even one that isn't shouldn't take that long. A high speed train this distance would be less than 2 hours making a day return a total possibility (I've done the same to Madrid) and eliminating the need for a hotel/sleep accomodation altogether for a meeting. In fact this kind of distance is really in the realm of "high-speed rail faster than air travel" due to the extra waits at airports and usually further from the city locations, not sure how bad this is in the US though. In Europe it's pretty bad. Not trying to bash here but it sounds like they're deliberately slow just so they can sell a moving hotel room.
- travisporter 4y ago
  No I can assure you that it’s just not possible to go faster with the infrastructure and freight rail priorities we have in the US
  - musicale 4y ago
    I wonder if it could be possible to enable Amtrak - or passengers - to sue to enforce the law that says it has priority over freight? "By Federal law, with only very few exceptions Amtrak passenger trains must be given preference over freight trains in using any rail line. Unfortunately, only the Department of Justice can enforce this law, and it has brought only one enforcement action against a freight company in Amtrak’s history, and that was nearly 40 years ago! As a result, freight railroads suffer no significant consequences for prioritizing their freight over our country’s rail passengers."[1] (emphasis mine) [1] https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/CY2017-Report-Card-–-FAQ-–-Route-Details.pdf https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/CY2017-R...
- mariojv 4y ago
  Non-road transit infrastructure in the US is quite bad and notoriously expensive to build. I very much enjoyed using the train system in Spain when I visited. Wish we had something like that here.
erulabs 4y ago
I met my wife and the mother of my children on the Amtrak “coast starlight express” - the late train that runs between LA and SF. We were seated together for dinner in the dining car and the rest is history. We would be first in line for this! Fantastic idea - I hope the economics make sense!
- spiritplumber 4y ago
  D'aww.
melling 4y ago
A couple million people fly between the 2 cities every year. It’s a big market https://thepointsguy.com/guide/travel-between-los-angeles-and-san-francisco/ https://thepointsguy.com/guide/travel-between-los-angeles-an... Really a shame they didn’t build that HSR 50 years ago when they talked about it.
- zamnos 4y ago
  In case you're referring to CAHSR, > In 2008, voters approved the plan as specified in Proposition 1A which is 15 years, which does sounds a lot like 50, but is 35 years newer than 1973. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail
softgrow 4y ago
Article mentions Japanese trains. Once a slightly fast train exists that can do the distance in less than four hours, it will kill the airlines and change the market entirely. (Experience of JR East in expanding services to new markets, 4-5 hours is the max distance Shinkansen out-competes air). Shinkansen have killed sleeper trains in Japan, whenever its built it will kill a service like this.
- lxm 4y ago
  In Japan a central station is within a hub of business and retail activity. In LA the central station is next to county jail and Skid Row. There’s additional expense (probably on both ends for SF-LA trip) that’s negligible in Japan to get to the final destination within the city.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Having the central station next to the jail and skid row is a political choice in CA, just like their choice to not build HSR between LA-SF. If they had enough political will to build a modern train along the length of California, they'd have enough political will to build a new train station somewhere decent. It's not even an American problem: NYC has a nice, brand-new train station right in the middle of Manhattan. The old one used to be under Madison Square Gardens and was decent and serviceable, but they recently completed a new one across the street under the old post office building, so taking a train from DC to NYC is actually a pretty decent experience. If NYC can build a really nice new Amtrak station in a desirable location, what's California's excuse?
tamade 4y ago
This is so sad. Tokyo-Osaka, a bit shorter than SF-LA, is a 2.5 hr train ride. Beijing-Shanghai, twice as far as SF-LA, is a mere 4 hour train ride.
- musicale 4y ago
  California is trying to build a high speed rail line connecting Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield as early as 2030-2033! "Between 2030 and 2033, begin high-speed passenger service between Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield" [1] [1] https://hsr.ca.gov/about/project-update-reports/2023-project-update-report/ https://hsr.ca.gov/about/project-update-reports/2023-project...
jayzalowitz 4y ago
Sleep bus was amazing for this.
piotrkaminski 4y ago
Cabin (https://www.cabinprivatetravel.com/ https://www.cabinprivatetravel.com/) used to offer an SF-LA sleeper bus circa 2017, but looks like they're just doing private charters nowadays. I guess they couldn't make it work even with $115 one-way tickets. The sleeper train here is admittedly aiming at a slightly different audience but it's not clear to me it'll be any more successful...
- CraigRo 4y ago
  I took it. I thought it was great, but there was only one bus, and it seemed like the founders were good at tech, but not great operators of buses
xp84 4y ago
Although I hate to admit it because I love the idea of CA HSR, it seems like allocating that eleventy billion dollars or whatever it’s supposed to cost, towards making sleeper car service on this route cheap and readily available (in other words making sure they can do long enough trains, and subsidizing prices to bring down ticket costs) would have had a bigger impact than the ambitious but decades-long effort that we are doing (unless Dems lose the political power anytime in the 2020s, at which point they might just abandon it all to rot half-finished and useless). I know I’d be just fine with making that trip this way especially if those tax dollars brought down the cost.
mdrzn 4y ago
Weird, to cover 383 miles (616km) it would make sense to get a high speed train which would cover the distance in just a few hours.
pbackx 4y ago
In Europe sleeper trains have become somewhat extinct. High speed rail is just so fast and Ryanair so cheap, they became unprofitable. However, there seems to be a revival going on. Especially the Australian railway operator (OBB) is investing a lot in their Nightjet trains. Some of the trains allow you to take your car with you. I'm not sure if they are profitable, but they seem to be fully booked during the summer months (we had to book 2+ months in advance last year)
monsterofcookie 4y ago
Almost good idea, except no one cares. SF and LA may as well be on different planets

43 points by lxm 4y ago

I love night trains. It's really convenient to be able to go to sleep in one place and wake up at my destination in the morning. Train stations tend to be in much more central locations compared to airports, and it's nice to not have to go through security.

cyanf 4y ago
It’s practically teleportation.
teleforce 4y ago
Night train is very popular around the world, and it's a hit with tourists because they can save extra day on hotel expense and travelling time. It's a kind of travelling hack. Japan Sunrise Night Train is extremely popular and tourist need to book them several weeks in advance to get a ticket [1]. You can use Japan Rail Pass card for the nobi-nobi economy seats but need to pay extra for the private compartments. [1] Night Trains: https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2356.html https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2356.html
- sufficer 4y ago
  Night trains with amtrak are really expensive in USA. Can anyone point me in to some cheaper options? Either Canada or europe?
  - illirik 4y ago
    As an American sleeper train enthusiast, my recs are: - If you find yourself in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland, the Nightjet is IMHO the best sleeper train in the world on balance. Between very reasonable fares, high hotel rates in the cities it serves, and mostly new rolling stock, it's a bargain. - If you live on the East Coast or Midwestern US, there are several Amtrak services that are reasonably priced when booked well in advance (3-6 months). The City of New Orleans (from Chicago) or the silver services (two different NYC - Florida trains, but they take different routes through NC, SC, and GA) have much more reasonable fares than the Western routes. - You can often get a good deal on Via Rail in Canada; they still allow you to book a single berth, and they regularly release promo fares for specific dates. The deals are available at https://www.viarail.ca/en/offers/sleeper-plus-class-deals/ https://www.viarail.ca/en/offers/sleeper-plus-class-deals/ and you can scroll down to see the dates and routes that there are savings on. The best deals are from the major cities in Canada (especially Montreal) to points East on the Ocean - you can get a discount private cabin from e.g. Montreal to Halifax, but you're SOL if you want to go to Vancouver in anything other than a berth. Book a Corridor to get to Montreal. These are best booked close-in, unlike Amtrak. However, if you have the means, book a room(ette) on the Empire Builder in winter. It's simply incredible.
- wenc 4y ago
  I think it depends how you look at it, but night trains in Japan are actually not that popular -- so much so they had to reduce routes so the Sunrise Seto became the only surviving night train (as pointed out in your linked article), which why it's hard to book. I actually wanted to book it from Osaka to Tokyo, but there were a number of hoops to jump through to book it from abroad with a JR Rail Pass that hadn't yet been exchanged, that I ended up just book another hotel night and then hopped on an morning Shinkansen to Tokyo.
  - claritise 4y ago
    Barely anyone takes the Sunrise Seto. I managed to easily book it while I was there. I really want to take it again when I am back, 100% quintessential Japanese bliss. I hope they never get rid of it.
prawn 4y ago
They should be available everywhere. Where they exist in Australia, it's pretty much only for luxury, hosted travel. The Adelaide-Melbourne service is seated and runs during the day. I think they're competing with freight which gets priority though.
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
I used to take the night train between Shanghai and Beijing. It was ok, but train stations in China are not generally as central as they are in Europe/Japan (although usually better positioned than the states). The HSR stations are even less convenient in their locations (eg Beijing South vs Beijing main station), however, so now it’s a bit less convenient. The new HSR trains have replaced the night trains (no need for a bed on a four hour ride).

paxys 4y ago

> Vollebregt said Dreamstar’s service would be “more like a private jet company than a big airline,” focused on the specialized niche of “upscale, overnight, hotel train service.” > One-way tickets would cost about $300, $600 and $1,000, depending on the tier of room, which Vollebregt said is higher than typical airfare, but below other North American sleeper trains. I'm going to say this niche fits exactly 5 people in the state of California.

CaptainNegative 4y ago
$300 sounds pretty comparable to an overnight stay at a hotel room.
lajupechere 4y ago
This could maybe work if it was sf-Seattle. LA is too close
- klyrs 4y ago
  Insert snark about socal traffic. But honestly rail travel in the US is obnoxiously slow and freight has priority resulting in maddening delays. As long as they don't wake up the passengers on arrival, and stay parked until a reasonable hour, this may be the only way to travel by rail and get there on time.
- pulvinar 4y ago
  LA is 8 hours away by train -- fits nicely in one night's sleep. Seattle is a whole day (or 2 hours by plane).
  - the_mar 4y ago
    Why is US train travel so much slower than that in Russia of all places.
    - wpietri 4y ago
      In short, the car industry and car culture won out here. A lot of public transit is seen as for the poor and other disfavored groups. The US right complains endlessly about Amtrak subsidies, while somehow ignoring the half-trillion dollars (per Wikipedia) spent on the interstate system (plus lots more spending at the state for highways, etc).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bragr 4y ago

The problem everyone had with the overnight LA-SF bus was that the drive wasn't long enough for a proper night's sleep, if you could sleep at all bounced around in your bunk. Granted a train allows for better accommodation, but doesn't solve the underlying problem.

quantified 4y ago
It could go slow...
- the_mar 4y ago
  Idk about you but I would usually need to shower and brush my teeth before business meetings. I doubt the trains would include functional showers
  - jhpaul 4y ago
    Amtrak sleepers have showers in the bedrooms and the roomettes share 2 per car.
  - jrmg 4y ago
    Regular Amtrak cars with sleeping cabins have functional showers right now.
    - the_mar 4y ago
      I know they exist, the one's I've seen are used to store towels and other things. By functional I mean really the kind you can shower in, with no pain. Has anyone actually tried them? how is the water pressure?
      - jrmg 4y ago
        Pain? Like from them being too small or causing you to fall over or something? I’ve used them, they’re fine. IIRC quite large. I don’t remember them being amazing, so the water pressure was probably just at the ‘acceptable’ level. They have the usual drawbacks of shared showers - water and dirt creeping into the dry areas because people aren’t careful - so if I were designing a new luxury sleeping train car I’d try to get one per cabin, or maybe one per pair of cabins.

wkat4242 4y ago

They take 10 hours?? (10pm to 8am) It's not even 600km. Here in Spain I can travel the 800km from Barcelona to Madrid in 2.5 actual hours. Now this is a high speed train but even one that isn't shouldn't take that long. A high speed train this distance would be less than 2 hours making a day return a total possibility (I've done the same to Madrid) and eliminating the need for a hotel/sleep accomodation altogether for a meeting. In fact this kind of distance is really in the realm of "high-speed rail faster than air travel" due to the extra waits at airports and usually further from the city locations, not sure how bad this is in the US though. In Europe it's pretty bad. Not trying to bash here but it sounds like they're deliberately slow just so they can sell a moving hotel room.

travisporter 4y ago
No I can assure you that it’s just not possible to go faster with the infrastructure and freight rail priorities we have in the US
- musicale 4y ago
  I wonder if it could be possible to enable Amtrak - or passengers - to sue to enforce the law that says it has priority over freight? "By Federal law, with only very few exceptions Amtrak passenger trains must be given preference over freight trains in using any rail line. Unfortunately, only the Department of Justice can enforce this law, and it has brought only one enforcement action against a freight company in Amtrak’s history, and that was nearly 40 years ago! As a result, freight railroads suffer no significant consequences for prioritizing their freight over our country’s rail passengers."[1] (emphasis mine) [1] https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/CY2017-Report-Card-–-FAQ-–-Route-Details.pdf https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/CY2017-R...
mariojv 4y ago
Non-road transit infrastructure in the US is quite bad and notoriously expensive to build. I very much enjoyed using the train system in Spain when I visited. Wish we had something like that here.

erulabs 4y ago

I met my wife and the mother of my children on the Amtrak “coast starlight express” - the late train that runs between LA and SF. We were seated together for dinner in the dining car and the rest is history. We would be first in line for this! Fantastic idea - I hope the economics make sense!

spiritplumber 4y ago
D'aww.

melling 4y ago

A couple million people fly between the 2 cities every year. It’s a big market https://thepointsguy.com/guide/travel-between-los-angeles-and-san-francisco/ https://thepointsguy.com/guide/travel-between-los-angeles-an... Really a shame they didn’t build that HSR 50 years ago when they talked about it.

zamnos 4y ago
In case you're referring to CAHSR, > In 2008, voters approved the plan as specified in Proposition 1A which is 15 years, which does sounds a lot like 50, but is 35 years newer than 1973. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail

softgrow 4y ago

Article mentions Japanese trains. Once a slightly fast train exists that can do the distance in less than four hours, it will kill the airlines and change the market entirely. (Experience of JR East in expanding services to new markets, 4-5 hours is the max distance Shinkansen out-competes air). Shinkansen have killed sleeper trains in Japan, whenever its built it will kill a service like this.

lxm 4y ago
In Japan a central station is within a hub of business and retail activity. In LA the central station is next to county jail and Skid Row. There’s additional expense (probably on both ends for SF-LA trip) that’s negligible in Japan to get to the final destination within the city.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  Having the central station next to the jail and skid row is a political choice in CA, just like their choice to not build HSR between LA-SF. If they had enough political will to build a modern train along the length of California, they'd have enough political will to build a new train station somewhere decent. It's not even an American problem: NYC has a nice, brand-new train station right in the middle of Manhattan. The old one used to be under Madison Square Gardens and was decent and serviceable, but they recently completed a new one across the street under the old post office building, so taking a train from DC to NYC is actually a pretty decent experience. If NYC can build a really nice new Amtrak station in a desirable location, what's California's excuse?

tamade 4y ago

This is so sad. Tokyo-Osaka, a bit shorter than SF-LA, is a 2.5 hr train ride. Beijing-Shanghai, twice as far as SF-LA, is a mere 4 hour train ride.

musicale 4y ago
California is trying to build a high speed rail line connecting Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield as early as 2030-2033! "Between 2030 and 2033, begin high-speed passenger service between Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield" [1] [1] https://hsr.ca.gov/about/project-update-reports/2023-project-update-report/ https://hsr.ca.gov/about/project-update-reports/2023-project...

jayzalowitz 4y ago

Sleep bus was amazing for this.

piotrkaminski 4y ago

Cabin (https://www.cabinprivatetravel.com/ https://www.cabinprivatetravel.com/) used to offer an SF-LA sleeper bus circa 2017, but looks like they're just doing private charters nowadays. I guess they couldn't make it work even with $115 one-way tickets. The sleeper train here is admittedly aiming at a slightly different audience but it's not clear to me it'll be any more successful...

CraigRo 4y ago
I took it. I thought it was great, but there was only one bus, and it seemed like the founders were good at tech, but not great operators of buses

xp84 4y ago

Although I hate to admit it because I love the idea of CA HSR, it seems like allocating that eleventy billion dollars or whatever it’s supposed to cost, towards making sleeper car service on this route cheap and readily available (in other words making sure they can do long enough trains, and subsidizing prices to bring down ticket costs) would have had a bigger impact than the ambitious but decades-long effort that we are doing (unless Dems lose the political power anytime in the 2020s, at which point they might just abandon it all to rot half-finished and useless). I know I’d be just fine with making that trip this way especially if those tax dollars brought down the cost.

mdrzn 4y ago

Weird, to cover 383 miles (616km) it would make sense to get a high speed train which would cover the distance in just a few hours.

pbackx 4y ago

In Europe sleeper trains have become somewhat extinct. High speed rail is just so fast and Ryanair so cheap, they became unprofitable. However, there seems to be a revival going on. Especially the Australian railway operator (OBB) is investing a lot in their Nightjet trains. Some of the trains allow you to take your car with you. I'm not sure if they are profitable, but they seem to be fully booked during the summer months (we had to book 2+ months in advance last year)

monsterofcookie 4y ago

Almost good idea, except no one cares. SF and LA may as well be on different planets