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What it’s like to ship yourself overnight on Cabin’s sleep pod bus

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Re: What it’s like to ship yourself overnight on Cabin’s sleep pod bus

#31

Post by chippy »

gargravarr wrote: post #24
atemerev wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capsules are arranged differently — they can be stacked together vertically, and probably be offered at least for the price of business class seats. (If the weight is a great concern, and it is, and capsules are too heavy — hammocks can also be an option).

I've thought about exactly this. Take a cue from Japanese honeycomb hotels and stack them three high in the place of the current seats - you could get equivalent passenger numbers on the plane, while giving people a safe way to stretch out on a long flight. Correctly designed, they would be safe, possibly safer than seats, during an emergency landing, although I can see getting out in a hurry being a major setback fo…

The major thing about beds on planes is international safety regulations. Two that I can remember when working for an airline which were introducing beds:

1) The aisle has to be a set width, so you cant stack cabins across the plane.

2) Passengers need to seated and have a seat belt on upon take off and landing.

I think theres another about being able to be belted in if turbulence happens, and be inspectable by attendants. In short, its not as easy as one may think, and its these regulations which complicate things.

Re: What it’s like to ship yourself overnight on Cabin’s sleep pod bus

#32

Post by icebraining »

nkoren wrote: post #25
ubernostrum wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of San Francisco it's a bit unfair to knock Amtrak for the location of the terminal, because it's not their fault, it's the fault of geography. San Francisco sits at the tip of a peninsula; for a train to stop in SF -- actually in SF and not Oakland or San Jose -- and also continue on to other locations would require the train to come up the peninsula, make its San Francisco stop, then turn around and go…

Engineering can easily trump Geography in this case: you could just tunnel under the Golden Gate and keep going north. This would be a utterly trivial compared to something like the Seikan Tunnel[1]. Just to be clear: not knocking Amtrak here. They're virtually budget-less, for the most part disallowed from owning or even maintaining their own infrastructure, so building new infrastructure would be completely beyond…

You could also just use the bridge itself. My country has a copy of the Golden Gate (built by the same company) and we've retrofitted it to run trains underneath the deck: https://www.google.com/search?q=ponte+25+de+abril+comboio&tb...

Re: What it’s like to ship yourself overnight on Cabin’s sleep pod bus

#34

Post by Tepix »

I can't wait until we get autonomous driving and can convert our cars into sleep pods. When you're going across the country at a slow pace, the MPG (or MPGe for electric cars) is also going to be fantastic. You'd still need autonomous recharging for an electric car but apparently that's a solved problem as well.

Re: What it’s like to ship yourself overnight on Cabin’s sleep pod bus

#35

Post by joezydeco »

exDM69 wrote: post #11
fruitcake wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a sleeper train up the coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco: https://www.amtrak.com/coast-starlight-train

Someone in the comments mentioned that Amtrak's sleeper train travels daytime on the SF to LA stint and the terminals are some way away from the city. So the travel by night advantage is gone. Amtrak's sleeper cars are also quite expensive when I last looked at it as an option for getting from Colorado to San Francisco. The price compared to a seat on the train was 2..3x or more (but it includes food).

Amtrak is also notorious for being way off on arrival times. Sometimes on the order of a day or longer. That's what happens when you share rails with the freight lines.

Re: What it’s like to ship yourself overnight on Cabin’s sleep pod bus

#36

Post by kingofpandora »

icebraining wrote: post #32
nkoren wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineering can easily trump Geography in this case: you could just tunnel under the Golden Gate and keep going north. This would be a utterly trivial compared to something like the Seikan Tunnel[1]. Just to be clear: not knocking Amtrak here. They're virtually budget-less, for the most part disallowed from owning or even maintaining their own infrastructure, so building new infrastructure would be completely beyond…

You could also just use the bridge itself. My country has a copy of the Golden Gate (built by the same company) and we've retrofitted it to run trains underneath the deck: https://www.google.com/search?q=ponte+25+de+abril+comboio&tb...

Never heard of this bridge until today. However, according to Wikipedia:

> Because it is a suspension bridge and has similar coloring, it is often compared to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, US. It was built by the American Bridge Company which constructed the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, but not the Golden Gate.

Re: What it’s like to ship yourself overnight on Cabin’s sleep pod bus

#37

Post by icebraining »

kingofpandora wrote: post #36
icebraining wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also just use the bridge itself. My country has a copy of the Golden Gate (built by the same company) and we've retrofitted it to run trains underneath the deck: https://www.google.com/search?q=ponte+25+de+abril+comboio&tb...

Never heard of this bridge until today. However, according to Wikipedia: > Because it is a suspension bridge and has similar coloring, it is often compared to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, US. It was built by the American Bridge Company which constructed the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, but not the Golden Gate.

Oh. My life is a lie :| Thanks, I don't even know where I've heard that. Still, same style of bridge.

Re: What it’s like to ship yourself overnight on Cabin’s sleep pod bus

#38

Post by wlesieutre »

throwanem wrote: post #27
anotheryou wrote: post #7

You americans don't have any trains, eh? :) Not exactly the ritz, but does the job: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=sleeping+train

Everywhere except the eastern seaboard from roughly DC north, we really don't - we have a freight rail system that occasionally hosts passenger trains, too. It's super annoying. I hate to fly - well, that's not true; I hate the pervasive unpleasantness and inconvenience of US commercial air travel - and find trains much more congenial, but e.g. two days to get from where I live to where I grew up, plus two more days…

Found a map of the system on Amtraks' site: http://blog.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/RTTL-Map-I...

There are a couple of routes across the country, stopping roughly once per state if that. As you mentioned, it's freight with a few passenger trains sharing the tracks.

In addition to the northeast region (DC, Philly, NYC, Boston) you can do pretty well in Chicago. It's the hub of all of those routes except for the one on the US/Mexico border.

Re: What it’s like to ship yourself overnight on Cabin’s sleep pod bus

#39

Post by 0x4f3759df »

wlesieutre wrote: post #38
throwanem wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everywhere except the eastern seaboard from roughly DC north, we really don't - we have a freight rail system that occasionally hosts passenger trains, too. It's super annoying. I hate to fly - well, that's not true; I hate the pervasive unpleasantness and inconvenience of US commercial air travel - and find trains much more congenial, but e.g. two days to get from where I live to where I grew up, plus two more days…

Found a map of the system on Amtraks' site: http://blog.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/RTTL-Map-I... There are a couple of routes across the country, stopping roughly once per state if that. As you mentioned, it's freight with a few passenger trains sharing the tracks. In addition to the northeast region (DC, Philly, NYC, Boston) you can do pretty well in Chicago. It's the hub of all of those routes except for…

"Why Trains Suck in America" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

Re: What it’s like to ship yourself overnight on Cabin’s sleep pod bus

#40

Post by Robotbeat »

anotheryou wrote: post #7

You americans don't have any trains, eh? :) Not exactly the ritz, but does the job: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=sleeping+train

Americans, I do believe, pioneered the sleeping car for trains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_car

First the Cumberland Valley Railroad in 1839, then George Pullman's more luxurious version in 1865 that was very successful (and from there, it spread to Europe).

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