The 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?
The 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.
The capitol corridor goes to Sacramento and not LA. The Amtrak from SF (well Oakland) to LA leaves at 9am and arrives at 9pm. The one coming back leaves at 10am and arrives at 10pm. Hardly convenient timing and 4 hours slower than the bus (and that's without even counting the BART time to get into SF itself).
I took the California Zephyr all the way to Chicago and then continued my rail trip on to New York. While the dining experience differs depending on the route, I can tell you first hand that on my way to Chicago I was slamming back steak and clams. Couldn't believe it was included in the ticket. And also complimentary coffee. They don't tell you this, but the sleeper ticket is actually first class. I initially thought I was being gouged for the privilege of not trying to sleep in a chair.
I found the food on the Amtrak Coastal Starlight (Seattle-LA) better than expected, and their wines were much better than I expected (comparable to Asian airlines' wines in business class). A pleasant journey all round really.
> 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?
I can't wait to park my RV 30 miles away from work, go to sleep, and be woken up at 4am due to jostling and rush-hour noise as a fleet of hundreds of RVs all try to self-drive themselves into the city.
I can't wait to use one of the least fuel-efficient vehicles possible, and make it even worse by having it drive itself around constantly to meet me at my office (since there's nowhere for it to park inside the city). It's okay, climate change will only be killing the people who can't afford their own personal RV.
That or living in a $2000/month studio apartment in the Tenderloin? I’d take the self driving RV. If it’s electric, charged by renewable energy, is it really that bad for the environment?
>>having it drive out to Tracy each evening and parking in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
Do American supermarkets not have any time limits on parking? In the UK every single supermarket will have a 2-3 hour time limit on parking with anywhere between £70-100 fine for parking there for longer.
It's not American supermarkets in general, but specifically Wal-Mart. Most Wal-Mart stores allow RV parking overnight. I would expect that UK supermarkets have only scarce parking, but Wal-Mart away from city centers typically has so much parking space that the lot is literally never full.
So truck drivers don't overnight at UK supermarkets? What do they do when they can't park at a truck stop and they're out of legal driving hours for the day?
I'm driving a semi truck. I'm parked in a Kroger parking lot in Fort Worth TX (in an out of the way corner), having slept here overnight. Kroger is unusual, I mostly use Walmart when I can't find "legitimate" parking, because the lots are generally bigger, near interstates, and easier to navigate a truck and 53 foot trailer through.
I tried a nearby truck stop first, but there were no spaces.
Two nights before I slept on an interstate on ramp on Alabama. There were ten to fifteen other trucks on that same ramp, and when I left the next morning most of the subsequent ramps were full of trucks.
Which is to say, I'm a frequent Walmart parker, by necessity.
I've never seen a specific time limit at a Walmart lot. Sometimes I see no truck parking signs at Walmart, or no overnight signs (and sometimes i park there anyway, especially if there are other trucks there).
I have seen time limit signs at some rest areas, for six or eight hours. Yet truckers are required to stop for at least ten hours between working days. I ignore those signs.
And by the way, depending on the part of the country, those rest area off and on ramps are usually also packed with trucks.
I've only been told to move once, waking me from sleep, when I accidentally parked in a paid reserved space at a truck stop. (Yep, they have those, more and more.)
>>
So truck drivers don't overnight at UK supermarkets? What do they do when they can't park at a truck stop and they're out of legal driving hours for the day?
Don't know, but certainly not that. Even the huge supermarkets with their spacious(for the UK) car parks are way too narrow for a large truck - the delivery entrance is usually elsewhere, you couldn't even make a turn with one in here - as an example, that's probably the largest supermarket with the largest amount of parking anywhere in my area - look at how small these intersections are, no way you would fit a truck here.
Walmart as a company is generally friendly to both truckers and "vandwellers" who use their lot for overnight parking. The only exceptions I've seen are smaller "neighborhood Walmart" locations and the occasional small town where the cops have nothing to do all night except harass overnight truckers and mobile home/van drivers.
Wal-Mart has allowed for overnight parking for quite awhile.
It's even in their corporate Q&A[1]
Q: Can I park my RV at a Walmart store?
A: While we do not offer electrical service or accommodations typically necessary for RV customers, Walmart values RV travelers and considers them among our best customers. Consequently, we do permit RV parking on our store parking lots as we are able. Permission to park is extended by individual store managers, based on availability of parking space and local laws. Please contact management in each store to ensure accommodations before parking your RV.
Basically, no. Unless you're in a very popular area, there will be no limits on parking. I've noticed that even out of the way english parking lots have strict limits and frequently automated camera systems for finding perpetrators. Do you know why that is? To keep out "undesirables"(gypsies, vagabonds)?
Many supermarkets in the UK outsource maintenance of their car parks to private firms, who benefit from being able to charge after a certain period has elapsed. It's the same with hospitals, train stations, council car parks. It makes me sad.
If this is true these fines are unenforceable. Parking tickets/fines are allowed in UK law for breaking the rules on public land. Parking on private land is governed by contract law. For a contract to be legally binding it needs to consist of the elements of a contract: offer, acceptance, and consideration, i.e. payment. Which UK supermarket charges for parking?
Literally every single one in the UK. But it's not even supermarkets, pretty much every car park in this country works like this, I've even seen ones next to pubs and cinemas have that(made for a fun viewing of Alien + Aliens in a promotional re-release few years ago, the staff at the cinema were warning everyone that if you parked outside and are here to see both movies in one go you will be charged for overstaying as the time limit is 4 hours). And those fines are very much enforceable - as long as the conditions are listed in a public view the company can charge you for parking over the allowed time(it's a charge, not a fine technically).
From your link "A court may decide that you breached a contract with the parking operator and that you must pay the charges."
I don't understand how free parking satisfies the elements of a contract. There is no consideration. This would make sense if you paid for parking (thereby forming a contract) and overstayed (breach of contract).
I mean, what's difficult here? When you arrive at a car park there's a sign that says "by parking here, you agree to pay £70 per day of parking. The initial 3 hours are free. Your licence plate number has been recorded on entry and will be recorded on exit to determine the amount of time you spent here. If you do not agree to those terms you need to have to leave within 10 minutes of arrival". Basically by parking at someone's property you form a contract with them, as long as the terms of it are publicly and visibly displayed.
Electric is the only way to get down to those operating costs. So your electric RV would need to supercharge by itself on the trip. $0.20/mile is 2.5kwh/mi at $0.08/kWh... seems possible.
Autonomous RVs will change everything. I'll definitely be buying one when they are available. I like RVs but they are a challenge to drive. Take that downside away, and you have my ideal travel situation.
* 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 ) 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?
Does 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?
I’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.
I'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 ..
I 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 ;)
Nice! 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 ..
The 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.
There 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 ?
Because there is literally no train service between SF and LA—you have to go out of your way to transfer. The train stations are far outside of the city where you want to be. And our trains are SLOW. Less than 100km/h. It takes 8+ hours on a train.
There is a lot of way to accelerate an existing line: pendulation, remove curves, add more railways along the existing line, remove stops, on a straight railway any train can go at more than 200km/h. As for the transfer, underground/raised metro lines from the centre to the railway station in the suburbs ? Most of the new TGV station are now done outside city centre in France (for the same reason than here, surface is expensive near city centre).
Infrastructure projects in America are fucked for a variety of reasons that other posters in this thread discuss. Basically each of those options end up being super expensive, subject to unending legal challenges, and exist in a regulatory environment that does NOT support changing the status quo.
SNCF was in contract to help build a fast train in California, but the political climate created such a backwards "fast train" they pulled out because they didn't want to be involved with making shit. Dragging the US into the future has always been difficult to say the least.
Because 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.)
High 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.)
In 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).
> The French bullet train from Paris to Lyon is often cited as a line that is profitable, but it has a fare of 52 cents a mile. The German bullet train from Hannover to Wurzburg charges 46 cents a mile.
> On the East Coast, Amtrak’s Acela system, the closest thing to high-speed rail now operating in the U.S., charges an average of about 50 cents a mile for the 454-mile trip between Washington and Boston.
US bus fares are much cheaper. The exact same trip on the Bolt Bus would cost just $212 for a family of four, $0.11 per passenger mile.
And the Shinkansen, while a great train system especially in combination with Japan's train system generally, isn't cheap. A quick look says $130 for Tokyo to Kyoto--a common several hour route--one way, no-reserved. (Which sounds about right from my experience although I always have gotten one of the tourist passes you can only purchase overseas.)
You get outside of Western Europe and Japan and trains tend to get cheaper--don't have recent experience with China--but western trains are pretty pricey generally, especially of the walk up to the counter and buy a ticket variety.
As a tourist you can buy a rail pass (500€) which also includes the Shinkansen.
But yeah, similar prices and distance as:
Amsterdam Berlin
Amsterdam Paris
Yes, in some countries public transport is cheap. Also flux is is super cheap
But trains are just expensive. It’s almost always cheaper to fly.
That’s for 1 person. Multiply by 4 and it makes no sense to take a train.
Silicon 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?
Somewhere 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.
I 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.
I'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.
Sleeping 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.
Their 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.
Sleeper 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.
> 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.
It 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.
I'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.
"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.)
What 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.
Bullet 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.
"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."
Before 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.
I 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
Wow, 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.
I heard a really good argument against high-speed rail in California. We only have so much money to spend on transit. Transit problems tend to be bigger within cities than between them--5 is under-utilized, 880 is over-utilized--so it makes sense to concentrate efforts where we'll get the most return. Projects like a second BART tunnel and Caltrain electrification have a bigger impact on people's lives than a train they occasionally take.
Cabin is an even worse example of HSR demand because it travels when roads are underutilized.
See I kind of disagree. High speed train would let people live outside of SF which in turn would ease the pressure on the currently existing city transit.
HSR would let people spend a number of hours a day commuting to the Bay from Fresno at the cost a few hundred dollars per day. I doubt that would be attractive to all that many people except for those who commute into the Bay area for a chunk of the week and stay in a hotel. But at that point, they could be flying from just about anywhere west of Chicago.
Because 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.
From a legal perspective eminent powers can be exercised quite efficiently. They haven't been exercised efficiently in California because of politics. HSR officials spend far too long haggling with farmers and pay much more than a court would require in an attempt to minimize negative media attention. But it has backfired by drawing things out and ballooning costs.
To be fair, Japan has long had extensive rail lines, so it's not like they had to raze thousands of homes to cut the Shinkansen tracks. Also, the Shinkansen was built in the early 1960s, when Japan was quite a bit smaller population-wise and less built up.
And in Japan your property rights don’t go to the center of the earth so they can tunnel under your house with zero recourse. Not so here in the US of A.
The latest lines to be built are the Hokuriku Shinkansen (completed 1997-2015), Kyushu Shinkansen (built between 1991-2011) and the Hokkaido Shinkansen (construction strted 2005, still under construction). And of course the maglev Shinkansen has now started construction.
Two 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.
What? There is absolutely recourse, such as "sue them and at a minimum tie the project up in lawsuits for years". Or "be furious and rally with lots of other furious land owners/interested citizens and vote the bums out" because focused single interests, even as minorities, often can exert a great deal of political influence in a democracy. Or even illegally resisting through various means, which might not affect this area of California specifically but is a real threat in some parts of the US.
Eminent domain has an important place and has be used well, as well as abused. But whether justified or not its use, particularly in modern, is frequently fraught with controversy and political/legal battles.
It's just political suicide to use eminent domain these days, but if the political climate changes, maybe it'll be used again.
The power as written is pretty powerful and has only gotten more powerful and broad every time it's challenged in court. Since it's hard to argue that building a high speed rail isn't "public use", the only thing you'd be suing over would be the "just compensation" part.
I believe in that case, the government can take and use first, and you can lawsuit afterwards over how much money you think it's worth which really doesn't stall anything.
If the government can use eminent domain successfully take over land to give to private developers to build a mall, or even take it just to increase city revenues, it sure as hell can use it to build a train.
The 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.
Also, we're talking about land in California, which isn't known for cheap real estate. Even if the central valley might be relatively cheap, the amount of land that needs to be acquired in the LA and SF areas, which sprawl considerably, means a good portion of the needed land is likely very expensive for infrastructure. Building something on the 300 miles of I-5 from Tracy to Santa Clarita is probably much easier and cheaper than the last 30-40 miles on either end.
Not quite absolute, the government of New London, Connecticut took a home away from Susette Kelo and gave it to Pfizer because it would produce more jobs and taxes. Our property rights are not secure, and we could lose them by simply not paying property taxes.
It took 3 years to make it through the courts, and the city won by only 4-3 votes. And:
"As a result, many states changed their eminent domain laws. Prior to the Kelo decision, only seven states specifically prohibited the use of eminent domain for economic development except to eliminate blight. Since the decision, forty-five states have amended their eminent domain laws, although some of these changes are cosmetic"
And in the end, they didn't even use her property as intended:
"In spite of repeated efforts, the redeveloper (who stood to get a 91-acre (370,000 m2) waterfront tract of land for $1 per year)[citation needed] was unable to obtain financing, and the redevelopment project was abandoned. As of the beginning of 2010, the original Kelo property was a vacant lot, generating no tax revenue for the city.[2] In the aftermath of 2011's Hurricane Irene, the now-closed New London redevelopment area was turned into a dump for storm debris such as tree branches and other vegetation."
And China has access to cheap workers, and in China's hybrid capitalist/socialist economy they are able to do unprofitable projects. Most of their high speed rail routes are unprofitable.
They are profitable, just not in ways you can measure with money/capital. China depends on their massive rail network for social cohesion and connecting people to the central government in Beijing. How much that has generated in industry growth is not something that can be independently measured.
Likewise, in American areas with good rail transport, you see business boom around it. The net gain in commerce, sales tax revenue, etc. cannot easily be measured, but it's significant and American could benefit greatly with better rail transport. You'd see America begin to collapse in and become less spread out within less than 50 years (especially in urban spaces).
> I'm all for high speed rail, but why is it so expensive and why does it take so long to build?
Both have the same answer: because there's a whole lot of lobbyists that don't want it built. And it's not a secret - even the first segment they're building is just a screaming indicator of how little they want this thing to come to life.
Neither the airlines nor the car manufacturers nor the petrochemical companies nor billionaires like the Kochs want the thing to happen, so they're happy to shut it down at every possible turn - just look at every propaganda piece the "Reason Foundation" keeps pumping out against the project.
France and Italy are covered in high speed rail projects that make this one seem almost trivial by comparison, but we can't do it because politicians are too happy to take a few campaign dollars and enjoy some free filet mignon medallions and expensive red wine than represent the people who elected them.
Because in the US, rail routes are almost exclusively owned by private freight carriers who are not motivated in the least to do public works projects and building an entirely new rail line would require taking away a ton of people's property.
> Wow, it's almost like there's demand for a high-speed, non-driving land route between LA and SF.
We'll see, it's not like this service has proved viability yet. As other's have pointed out, this is about twice the price of an hour and 40 minute flight. While some commenters are arguing that there are some folks who would take it to skip the hassle of the airport, I think pretty much the only people who would take this are those with a pretty severe fear of flying.
Don't forget those with a severe hatred of flying. When things became a ridiculous hassle in 2001 I used a simple logic: I don't like this, so I'm cutting it (air travel) out of my life. I've made exceptions of course, but yeah I would pay for something like this.
The question is, is there sufficient demand? Just to break even on the massive carbon footprint of building an HSR line, you need 5-10 million riders a year. Does that demand exist?
No major region or state in the US can do high-speed rail as easily or cheaply as Texas and they're still struggling to push through comparably modest roadblocks there. They're looking at more than a decade on a very simple line just from Dallas to Houston. It looks increasingly like the Texas line has a good chance of being constructed. However if it was that difficult for Texas, California can forget about it (unless the Federal Government gets involved and becomes belligerent, which I would favor).
If it were as straight-forward as spending a reasonable sum of money and building the rail, the US would already have numerous prominent high-speed rail routes.
Japan 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.
While 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.
I’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.
Exactly, 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.
In the case of LA specifically there are several airports scattered around the area. Also 3 in the Bay. So flying gives you some choice of start-end destinations. I assume not all the combos are common routes.
As someone who loathes flying with the heat of a thousand suns and who has taken that route on Amtrak, I'll be happy to try this service at my next convenience.
I don't hate the ride on Amtrak, but it's a hard route to sleep, since it's just a little too short to be worth booking the sleeper (which ends up being about double the rate compared to the bus ride), and sleeping in the open cabin can be a bit of a challenge. That, and the roads are at least capable of allowing for some routing around, unlike Amtrak which frequently hits freight traffic and has a pretty abysmal on-time reputation for the Coast Starlight.
Not all of us are in a rush, and most of us could use a good night of unplugged sleep. Plus it shaves off a night in a hotel, so there's actual savings there too.
Maybe the over-engineered sleeping platform is the point? Nail that with some patents, get the cost down, and you can put one in autonomous vehicles, airplanes, all manner of trains, etc etc etc. Get it right and mass produce it and the market size is gigantic.
Same as with trains: Its not cabins pricing thats expensive, its flights being too cheap - mostly due to tax subsidising of kerosin and similar. With proper energy costs and carbon pricing the bill would look different
It'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.
I took this bus twice, and would happily take it again, but probably because it just happens to fill my niche. From Santa Monica, taking rideshare to/from LAX would easily cost an extra $30 each way, not to mention the traffic on Friday evenings. Sometimes it takes longer to get to the airport than the flight itself.
Cabin is nice because the total time I spend awake (< 30mins at each end) is less than that of taking a flight (at least a 3 hour contiguous block). It's also less stressful not having to worry about luggage, security, when to leave for the airport, etc.
If I couldn't sleep like a rock, or didn't live in Santa Monica, or wanted to go to south bay instead of SF, I would get a flight instead. I agree this is not for everyone, whether it be comfort-wise or location-wise, but I do hope this new tech helps people sleep more peacefully, and that they expand to more locations.
Not for the times involved, right? If you want to leave late on Friday and leave late on Sunday to maximize the day time you're spending then it's comparable.
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.
Don'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.
It was always a tough call for me when I went home from Berkeley. The door to door time was almost identical, including going to airport, security, and going home from the airport.
Pretty much the only time I flew was when there was just one of us and I would either need to leave or arrive during rush hour.
But I'm curious, why did you drop off your spouse and then pick her up? Why not go together? Are you really afraid of flying and she's afraid of driving? I'm just trying to imagine a scenario where it makes sense to split up like that.
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.
I don’t disagree it could be quicker, city to city, but this was airport to airport. That would eliminate the drive to the airport for the person flying.
Isn't only twice the price pretty good for a brand new, unscaled service? Particularly compared to a century old industry that has had ages to optimize.
Sure, if you're looking at it purely from an academic perspective, it's not terrible. but from the prespective of a person who needs to get from LA to SF and is deciding what mode of transport to take, the excuses for why it's more expensive aren't very relevant.
I 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.
Honest 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 :/
They 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.
Flights 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.
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.
Except 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.
> "... 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."
I 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.
The 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.
The 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.
I 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.
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?