Sleep Your Way From San Francisco To LA

A new bus service connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles is trying to revolutionize the way people travel between these two cities, allowing passengers to fall asleep in one city and wake up in the next. With a focus on style and comfort, the service aims to deliver travellers fit and rested at their destination.

The distance between the two West Coast cities is about 400 miles and up until now people had two options to travel between them: a 6-hour journey by car, or 1.5-hour flight. Approximately 50,000 people are making this trip every day, and it’s quite unbelievable it has taken so long for alternatives to pop up. The Hyperloop project is promising to send passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 35 minutes, but its implementation is still far away. In the meantime, a new bus service called Cabin hopes to bring traveling on this route to a new level.

Cabin launched as SleepBus last year with three days of sold-out pilot drives up and down California. Allegedly 20,000 people signed on for the $45 trips, illustrating the enormous demand for transit options on this route. Since then, Cabin raised over $3 million of funding and started their bus service last month. Increasing the level of comfort and luxury, turning the bus into “moving hotels”, the ticket prices have been raised to $115 for a one-way ticket. Its flat rates make it more affordable than flying and probably beats the comfort of driving yourself.

So what will a trip with Cabin look like? The ride is a completely retrofitted bus with sleep pods stacked on top of each other. At the start of the trip, which takes off around 11 PM, you will be welcomed by hospitality attendants with a cup of tea. They will be at your service for the rest of the trip, which will arrive in the arrival city around 7 AM, so you won’t have to miss that morning espresso as well. The sleeping pods are equipped with memory foam mattresses, a personal outlet, reading light and complimentary ear plugs. There’s Wi-Fi on board, as well as a lounge area for drinks and socializing if you can’t sleep. But don’t expect a party bus, as each passenger can use the Cabin app to file noise complaints or to call an attendant. Last but not least, there’s a spacious bathroom on board, including mouth water to make you feel completely refreshed in the morning.

So, while the rest of humanity is waiting for autonomous cars and Hyperloops, Cabin takes an already existing mode of travel and reinvents it completely. Currently, buses leave on selected nights but the company hopes to provide nightly journeys from September. Based on feedback from the California trips in the coming weeks, more routes are planned on the New York-Boston, Boston-Washington, D.C., and NYC-D.C. routes.