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.

To be fair, most trips don't actually start and end at a bus, either.

Most trips don’t actually start and end at the bus depot either.

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 also effectively a hotel room. Few people fly out late Friday evening do much more than go to a hotel and crash that night.

It’s clearly got issues, but they don’t need to replace aircraft to be a profitable business.

Maybe reduce the carbon footprint ?