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Comment by danielharan | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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.

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.

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