Sleeper bus

I've travelled on night busses a bit, and as it is they're only for the financially challenged, because you can't easily sleep on them. Also, because of the extreme trauma of an overnight bus trip, they're usually only half full. I propose the following change. You would start with a bus with no seats in it. It would need to have good suspension, air conditioning, and curtains on the windows, but no better than you find on any modern long haul road coach. You would lay in anchoring points, similar to those used in aeroplanes to hold the seats. You'd then fit in two kinds of seats. One would be a standard bus seat, which you'd fit a row of in every second row position. Each row would have an aisle in the middle, as normal, and there would be four seats to a row, as usual. The seats might need to be a bit further apart, so the aisle was a little narrower. The second type of seat would be similar to a first class aeroplane seat (although probably narrower) in that it would be capable of folding flat to form a bed. These would be interleaved with the standard seats, so that there would be a row of them in every second row position. While the standard seats were in place, there wouldn't be enough room for the lay-flat seats to fold out all the way, and they would be mechanically 'configured' somehow so that if the user tried to do so they would only recline a short distance. This would be the 'daytime' configuration, and would appear to the users to be a slightly odd looking bus. At night, you'd remove all the standard seats, which would be facilitated by some kind of quick release anchor on the bottom. It would be a somewhat clumsy operation, but not unachievable in half an hour by two strong people, perhaps at the same time as the bus was being serviced, cleaned, and refuelled. The bus would then be in a nighttime configuration, suitable for trips of 7-12 hours which occurred mainly during the night. The bus would have half the passenger capacity for these trips, and would charge an increased fare. Passengers would be able to sit up, or recline the seat to form a bed, at their discretion.

I have seen some other sleeper bus layouts, but they've either had large numbers of fixed bunks (narrow, uncomfortable and no good during the day) or been campervan style things with kitchens and whatnot, which don't have a high passenger capacity. There are sleeper trains, but (at least in Australia) you usually have to purchase an entire cabin at high cost. They're a bit of an old person/tourist thing, not a serious alternative to air travel.

Why is this a good thing? It makes bus travel somewhat competative with air travel. Busses are much cheaper than planes for domestic travel (at least in Australia where I live) and can be booked on much shorter notice. The fares would end up much cheaper than an air ticket, even considering the reduced carrying capacity of the bus. For example, I can easily get a one way bus journey on a modern, air conditioned coach from Melbourne to Sydney for about $45 at short notice - ie less than a day. This seems to be true even during holiday periods. This is a twelve hour trip. Double that price for the half-capacity bus and you've got $90. This is maybe 20% below the price of a super-discounted one way air ticket, which you'd need to book many months in advance to get, and would only be available at low-demand times. A short notice or peak season ticket can be as much as $250 one way. You can carry much more luggage on a bus, and there isn't nearly as much fuss to get on one (no airports). If you really could sleep on an overnight bus journey and wake up at or close to the destination, you'd probably consider it. It would also be appealing to those who either couldn't fly for health reasons, had a phobia, or deemed it unsafe.

Has anyone seen anything like this in reality? Did it work?