As a tourist, a $300 sleeper train would be the obvious choice between LA and SF. Any halfway decent train service is superior to flying in economy. $300 would not be a bad price, considering that you avoid paying for a night in hotel.

For a lot of executives and business travelers, the alternative is flying in the night before and getting a hotel room.

A night train is a much, much better option.

Not from the Bay Area to LA. It’s a 45 minute to one hour flight. You can fly in, get your meetings in and get back all in a day.

I’ve done the Oakland to Burbank or LAX round trip that way a ton.

Spending like 6 hours in the airport?

For a day trip to LA? I usually arrive 60-90 minutes before my flight.

Even that is overkill. With TSA Pre/Clear and no checked bags you can easily roll in ~45 mins before the flight.

I have Precheck and typically clear security in under 10 minutes. That said, 45 mins is cutting it close for me. Typically I arrive an hour before so that I have a buffer against uncertainty (Precheck lines can be surprising long sometimes).

Most people who travel a lot like that are probably pre-check, maybe even clear. I am, and usually I get to the airport roughly when boarding starts if I'm flying economy (assuming boarding starts with first class). It's certainly not 6 hours total in the airport.

This said, I'd really like better trains since flying sucks still. Planes are dirty, expensive, and airports are quite awful.

Sleeping in a hotel room is still preferable to an uncomfortable bed on a bumpy train. And most business travelers on this route fly in directly in the morning and fly out in the evening, no hotel needed.

If they are serious about train commutes between SF and LA they need to make the high speed rail line happen and ferry people across in 2.5 hours station to station. Anything else is a non-starter.

For some! I've done a cross-country train trip and I really liked it, despite Amtrak's cars clearly needing a refresh. I'd prefer this.

A while back, a bunch of friends were all going from SF to the same conference in LA. Some drew, some flew. Door to door, it took about the same amount of time thanks to getting to the airport, renting a car, and getting from the airport. 6-7 hours, basically. Then there's checking in, etc.

So from my perspective, I can burn a day on travel and a night at a hotel. Or I can sleep through the travel and recover a whole day for something I actually want to use it for.

No business traveller is getting the $50 ticket though. And I like being rocked to sleep on a train... Not sure about US but on trains I've been on the middle fare is already quite comfy. The lower fares tend to lack in vertical space tbough. And your point about morning-in, evening-out is valid too.

How? Flying gives you the option of getting there and sleeping in a hotel or just flying the morning off.

If you're convenient to the airport on both sides and want to spend on both the flight and the room, knock yourself out. No 800 sq ft suites with balconies on a train. But if your aim is the city center on either end, and you'd like to not waste time or money, a night train with comfortable bunks is perfect. You waste few waking hours traveling in/out of airports, stripping for TSA, etc.

The odds of either origin or destination being near the LA train stop are roughly 0% and maybe 1% on the SF side.

This is just as inconvenient for the vast majority of residents who make the LA/SF travel as going to the airport.

The amount of people that regularly need to go between LA and SF post-covid has got to be pretty low.

“more like a private jet” is a bit of a joke. The primary benefit of a private jet is that it isn’t on a schedule and goes where you want when you want. Aside from them both being transportation, a train is about as far from a private jet as you can get.

$300 sounds pretty comparable to an overnight stay at a hotel room.

This could maybe work if it was sf-Seattle. LA is too close

LA is 8 hours away by train -- fits nicely in one night's sleep. Seattle is a whole day (or 2 hours by plane).

Why is US train travel so much slower than that in Russia of all places.

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).

US train companies are allergic to capital investment. Essentially no electrification, limited double tracking, passing sidings too short for the 2 mile+ freight trains, and essentially no alignment upgrades to increase running speed. Then we put a precision scheduled railway (PSR) operational model on top of it which incorporates none of these words => basically freight trains move ad-hoc when they are ready. This is why Amtrak service in the west can be 18 hours+ behind schedule.

In Russia, the entire Trans-Siberian Railroad is electrified and almost entirely double tracked.

The US makes very good use of its extensive rail system but they use it for astonishing amounts of cargo, not for moving around small numbers of people very quickly. Outside of perhaps the Boston/DC corridor, passenger rail service is about enjoying the scenery. For any other use, cars, buses, and airplanes are better in most ways.

No high speed rail.

CAHSR will cover more ground than Moscow-St. Petersburg in less time... if it can be completed, which given the political headwinds is a big "if."

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.

I'd do it for a romantic date with my girl!

Take her to SoCal and sleep on a train!

If you want a romantic date take the Coast Starlight during the day for the views and get a hotel room at either end at night.

honestly I'd rather be in a hotel room all day with my romantic partner.

you can probably guess why.

the sleeper-train novelty kind of appeals to me for that reason.

as for selling it to business people? I don't get that at all.

That train is about as stable as a washing machine. Can't imagine getting off after 6hrs without latent vertigo.

Yeah, but you know what they say about ... washing machines, right?

Is that per-seat or per-room? They don't really say.

> I'm going to say this niche fits exactly 5 people in the state of California.

Unfortunately numbers 3 and 4 just moved to Austin

If they fit this profile, they absolutely did not move to Austin.