Big wheels keep on turning
Skip the airport hassle and opt for a premium sleeper coach service to reach your destination
John Rosenberg found a last-minute flight for $200 in September from Washington, D.C., to Nashville, Tennessee, to see
Pearl Jam. But flights home were $600, and there was no easy way to take the train.
Rosenberg started searching for buses online. He stumbled on Napaway, a company that promised premium overnight accommodations on an 18-passenger bus with seats that fold into a flat bed and come with a pillow and blanket.
The week before, Rosenberg and his friends had spent 18 hours at Midway Airport in Chicago after they were bounced off their connecting flight to Washington. He spent the night and slept for 45 minutes in the airport chapel before security kicked him out.
The Napaway, Rosenberg reasoned, could not be worse. And at least he would be traveling, not waiting.
He booked the flight to Nashville and a ticket home on the Napaway for $125.
“My friends were all making fun of me,” said Rosenberg, 47. “You’re going to spend 11 hours on a luxury bus?”
He was.
On a Sunday night, after spending the weekend in Nashville, Rosenberg joined five other passengers, including me, on the Napaway, which in June began taking travelers back and forth from Washington to Nashville.
The company and other premium bus companies like it are betting that Americans will abandon the image of the rumbling, cramped bus as the transport of last resort for the cash-strapped and embrace long-haul coach travel.
Giant sleeper buses have been a staple of travel in parts of Latin America and Asia for decades. But in the United States, the concept has never taken hold, despite our vast highway system. Around 2017, Cabin, a two-story bus with beds tucked into private pods, began taking passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco for overnight trips, but stopped in 2020. Gaetano Crupi, founder of Cabin, declined to comment on why the service ended.
More successful have been high-end coach services that offer shorter journeys, including Red Coach, Vonlane and the Jet, a 14-seat bus that ferries people from Metro Center in Washington to Hudson Yards in New York City.
Napaway is the only “fully flat” sleeper bus in the country, said founder and CEO Dan Aronov. He is aware that many travelers may be skeptical of taking a 10- to 11-hour bus ride when a flight from Washington to Nashville takes less than 2 hours.
He responds by pointing out how miserable the airport experience can be. Flying is faster, but a passenger will still spend several hours getting to the airport, going through security and then waiting at the gate. And that is assuming a flight is not delayed, said Aronov, 29.
Contrast that experience with traveling while lying on a memory foam mattress pad and snuggling under a blanket, he said.
“You were going to spend 7 to 8 hours asleep,” Aronov said. “Now you’re just doing it in motion.”
It was companies such as Megabus and BoltBus, which offered $1 rides and curbside pickup in the early 2000s, that paved the way for premium coach travel, said Joseph Schwieterman, professor of public service at DePaul University in Chicago and director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development, which studies intercity bus travel.
Those companies renewed interest in intercity bus travel and spurred more innovation and investment, he said.
Now, as train service remains elusive in much of the South and air travel continues to frustrate travelers, it is possible the “stars have aligned” for premium coach travel, Schwieterman said.
Premium coach lines have significantly fewer overhead costs than rail and especially airlines, which have much higher fuel costs and need a “small army” of employees to operate, he said.
By contrast, a premium bus requires a crew of one to two drivers, which means that even if a company sells fewer than half of its seats on a trip, it can still cover its costs, so long as it does not lower fares to compete with conventional bus lines, Schwieterman said.
I arrived in Washington to catch the Napaway with my friend Theresa.
We found the bus at
9:30 p.m. at the designated meeting spot — a well-lit parking lot near the Wunder Garten, an outdoor beer garden.
We were joined by three other passengers: Ammie Conner, an 80-year-old retiree who was visiting her grandson in Nashville; Guillerma Saltano, a shy, 50-year-old woman from the Dominican Republic; and Catherine Lee, a 50-year-old grad student.
We gawked at the bus, an enormous black coach with a galaxy of stars painted on the side. Inside, there were 36 seats — two for each passenger — that convert into flat beds.
Aronov is hoping to add more routes — passengers have requested trips from Washington to Atlanta, New York and Boston.
The bus has added stops in Knoxville, Tennessee, on the Washington-Nashville route and has added Wednesday and Thursday to the weekly schedule.
Aronov joined us on my trip — he said he tries to ride the Napaway as much as possible. As the bus pulled away, he described how to lower the seats and pull down the black privacy screen. Each passenger received a sleep mask, toothpaste and a small toothbrush, ear plugs, and a disposable towelette.
I woke up briefly at 2 a.m. If anyone was snoring, I could not hear it over the rumbling wheels. The bus jostled, but the rocking motion was lulling. As I drifted back to sleep, I imagined this was how a baby nestled in a carriage feels.
I awoke at 7, surprised by how refreshed I felt.
The bus dropped us off in downtown Nashville, where my friend and I spent about 36 hours — plenty of time to visit the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and RCA Studio B, catch live music at Rudy’s Jazz Room, and overeat at Biscuit
Love, Peg Leg Porker and Monell’s.
I met Rosenberg, the Pearl Jam fan, on the ride back to Washington, where we were joined by Conner, Lee and Aronov.
The trip home was as peaceful as the trip down. An accident on Interstate 81 created a 5-mile backup around 5 a.m., delaying our arrival by about an hour. No one seemed annoyed. “I would go anywhere on this bus,” Conner said, as she rose from her seat.
Rosenberg said he slept well — about 4 hours, a typical night’s sleep for him.
“This was fantastic,” he told Aronov as he stepped off the bus. “Most comfortable I’ve ever been on a bus.”
I asked Rosenberg if he would ride the Napaway again.
Yes, he said, but only if a one-way plane ticket cost more than $300.