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Comment by martinald | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately this is unlikely to be successful. There is just no way you can run a reliable overnight passenger service on the intercity rail infrastructure of the US.

The track is mostly single track and heavily used by freight (where a few hours delay isn't the end of the world). Multi hour delays are extremely common and even with it being overnight, if you set off at say 11pm and aim to arrive at 8am, a 3 hour delay could see you arriving at 11am and your VIP passengers missing all their business meetings. They won't return!

FWIW I don't think Europe's push to overnight rail trains will be very effective either. It doesn't work well with overnight maintenance windows, and the yield per train is extremely low (100 passengers in 50 'rooms' vs 1000 normal seating passengers dictate a 10x ticket price). Also is extremely complex in Europe with many different signalling/communication systems, traction systems, etc.

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Agree with all of this. The ridership might be there but I doubt the business case is - and this is true in Europe as well. As far as I can tell sleeper services generally are not money-makers, and are subsidized by regular passenger service.

Which may be a desirable policy outcome for state rail agencies - but this is a private venture!

I think cost is an under-appreciated aspect of this. You're carrying 5-10x fewer passengers per-train, at greater cost (the cost of turning over a stateroom is many times higher than cleaning a coach seat, along with linens, food, etc.), on very expensive custom equipment that isn't suitable for other uses.

There seem to be two "major" (really heavy scare quotes here) players in the US private sleeper service scene. Dreamstar IMO is the more promising of the two (heavy caveat that this is relative to each other, not absolute odds) by realizing the only way to make the economics work is the ability to charge $$$$$ for tickets.

The other (Lunatrain) IMO is just out to lunch, with a claimed focus on affordability. None of the above leads to affordable tickets.

As somebody who is working on exactly this problem, I’d say the problem can be solved technically if one can get a high density of passengers, while providing privacy and comfort.

Most of the sleeper startups basically just work with renderings, we work with iterating on full sized mock ups. We did ergonomics/market testing with hundreds of test users. We have evidence that with the right cabin technology, you can be profitable, even produce a margin, and significantly disrupt air travel.

What's your view on the ÖBB mini cabins? It seems to me you can't possibly be much more dense than that within the European gauge

Definitely can be optimized along several dimensions. They got 40 cabins, we got 60 per rail car.

Have taken this in Europe, was really nice, and I consider this quite competitive with inter-European airlines:

It saves a lot of time, because you can use central train stations instead of transfering to/from the airport, and you depart late in the evening (get full use out of the departure day) and arrive somewhat early in the morning (don't lose much of that day, either).

So it does not have to be cheaper than an inland flight, it just has to be competitive with flight + 2x transfer + hotel, and while it might be slightly less comfortabel than a hotel room, you avoid airport transfer and -security, which is nice.

Yes but it's clearly not competitive because it has such a tiny marketshare and runs at a giant loss. And that's in Europe with exceptional infrastructure compared to the US (a lot of 4 track lines, with everything at least double track, allowing freight to get out the way).

The Autotrain is the only successful long distance Amtrak train (all the rest are subsidized).

Local and short distance can be profitable.

Northeast Regional (including Acela) is also very successful. But you may not consider that long distance. In fact, I thought most of the Amtrak's profits came from that. There are a couple other city pairs that do reasonably but, yes, mostly not.

Yeah, there are various regions but I don't consider it long distance until it has a sleeper (which I don't believe Acela has).

Pacific Surfliner is also very popular and close to profitable.

To be fair, Amtrak could make some or more of its routes profitable depending on how it allocates expenses - after all, they get hired to run some of the commuter rails, too.

No, Acela doesn't really make sense for Boston to DC travelers in general although I've done it when time wasn't really critical. Yeah Pacific SW combinations can work--again if time isn't of the essence. Have also done other relatively short routes like Raleigh to Charlotte.

LA → San Diego is competitive or even beats car trips (during rush hour).

It’s always my great sadness that they didn't make that the first high-speed rail segment, heck a few billion dollars on double track and other improvements would have cut an hour off that time. I don’t even know if LA union Station is straight though yet.

I took the Acela NY to Boston this year, and won't ever do it again. What was the time difference from the non-high speed supposed to be? I think it's a 40 minute difference or something.

We had multiple delays along our route and the 4 hour trip turned into almost 7.

I'll fly for the same price next time.

Not much usually. Maybe an hour. Dealing with NYC airports isn't really worth it most of the time. Will never fly if I'm not connecting.

It's quite successful in Europe

Yeah it's decent but the utter majority of cross European passenger travel happens by road and air.

Like, where? I lived in four EU countries and travelled to most of member states. I only heard of Austrian sleeper and some luxury Swiss expertise. Never heard anyone taking a sleeper in the modern times. Moscow-Paris train used to be a thing, but that’s in the past.

There's the London to Edinburgh Caledonian Express which I took and I took a sleeper from Brussels to Koln to Vienna? Koln was a stopover. Forget where the sleeper segment was. But I'll admit it was situations where neither time nor money were critical and were intermixed with business trips.

The fact that _you_ have not heard of it does not mean that it does not exist. The Austrian ÖBB has created a massive network over the last few years, including some innovative new rolling stock with sleeping cap capsules. Many classic routes within larger countries still exist, like the multiple routes in the UK, France and Sweden. There are new private startups like European Sleeper that operate an Antwerp - Prague sleeper

I would be surprised if it has even 1% marketshare on the routes they are on (vs driving, coach, day trains and flights.

For example; in the UK on London -> Edinburgh, Caledonian Sleeper has on average 250 passengers per day (but this is the entire route - not just london to edinburgh). Given there is roughly ~2tph throughout the day for about 16 hours a day, each with ~1000 seats (with very high load factors), that's about 30,000 passengers/day on the "day" train. Probably roughly that again flying. Plus driving and coaches and it is absolutely tiny.

I almost reflexively avoid both intra-European air travel and renting a car when I can. But if you're being cost-conscious, it's hard to avoid the European budget airlines compared to other alternatives a lot of the time, especially if you're traveling between major cities.

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