Jeff Clabaugh | jclabaugh@wtop.com
Startup luxury coach bus service Napaway Coach will launch its first route next month, from D.C. to Nashville. Its bus has beds.
Napaway will start the 10.5 hour redeye service to Nashville on June 17, with tickets starting at $125. Reservations can be booked up to the day of travel.
Napaway departs D.C. at 10 p.m. from 131 M St. NE, near the NoMa-Gallaudet Metro station. The bus arrives in Nashville at 7:30 a.m.
It will operate on a Friday-to-Sunday schedule initially, with additional days added in coming months.
The bus has personal “suites” that are 5 feet by 3.3 feet, with 13.2 square feet of space. Each has two seats that can be left upright for office mode. One or both can be laid flat to make a bed that’s 6 and a half feet long and 40 inches wide, with a memory foam mattress. The suites have privacy screens and two fold-out desks.
The beds are designed by Butterfly Flexible Seating Solutions, which is also developing beds for the aviation industry.
Napaway will also provide bedding and other overnight amenities.
The D.C.-to-Nashville route is the first for Napaway, though it expects to add other routes in the future.
A 10.5 hour overnight bus trip is considerably longer than a flight from D.C. to Nashville, but Napaway founder Dan Aronov thinks it’s a less stressful option.
“We’re trying to eliminate all the dead time involved in traveling, like spending most of the day in transit for a flight that might only take an hour or two in the air. With Napaway, there is no wasted time, You just board, relax, sleep and arrive at your destination,” Aronov said.
“No airports, no security lines, nobody sitting next to you, no stress and no last-minute rip-offs.”
Aronov recently told trade publication Bus Ride he eventually wants to create a national network, connecting major cities.
Bus travel from the D.C. area to New York has long been popular. Napaway is the second non-New York bus route from D.C. announced this week.
Intercity travel company OurBus is launching a route from D.C. to the southern Jersey Shore, connecting to five New Jersey beach towns, for $59 each way.
Jeff Clabaugh has spent 20 years covering the Washington region's economy and financial markets for WTOP as part of a partnership with the Washington Business Journal, and officially joined the WTOP newsroom staff in January 2016.
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