What would travel times be like in an optimized airport for regional trips:
- Planes with no pilots
- Separation reduction
- No in flight snacks or beverages
- Minimum of one door per forty passengers
- New jetways coordinated to work with no pilot planes
- Little to no security
- Denser taxisways, runways, and terminals
- Flat, non-variable ticket price
Something similar should dramatically reduce the overall travel times, allow for better and closer placement of airports, greatly increase flight rates, etc.
Taking a trip between SFO and LAX, you need to leave your location maybe 2 hours before your flight (obviously time and location dependent, but IMO a good reference time). Then you have a 1.25 hour long flight. Finally another 1.5 hours to navigate the airport and get to your final destination. 4.75 hours of travel time.
If the above measures are implemented and you no longer need to even plan ahead for a flight because they're constantly leaving every 15 minutes or less you can probably reduce the total time way down. Instead of leaving 2 hours before you want to fly, you could leave maybe .75 of an hour prior. Your flight time is reduced due to shorter taxi etc and now is only 1.25 hours. After landing, the taxi time is shorter, deplaning quicker, etc so now you only need 1 hour to get to your final destination. 3 hours of travel time.
It seems like it would be cheaper and more feasible to do the above then trying to build a hyper loop. If the hyper loop is sub-sonic, I doubt it would do much better than the above scenario. If super-sonic it seems like it would only be a bit better and only cut down on the "flight time".
I'm still excited for something like the hyper-loop or more generally what it could mean: almost no matter where I am in a region, I could commute to a job or entertainment etc, because the friction, cost, and time of travel would be so short. Live in Portland? Want to eat dinner in San Francisco or Seattle? Not a problem. Same for having a job in Silicon Valley. Much more freedom to choose where you live and work.
Edit:
Boeing checking on enplaning an deplaning over time (can show what is possible) and the effects of changed procedure or single/double doors on a larger passenger count:
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aer...ly/t01txt.html
Security process times seem to be 10 to 20 minutes at larger airports. Couple of examples:
http://www.ifly.com/san-francisco-in...nal/wait-times and
http://www.ifly.com/chicago-ohare-in...ort/wait-times
Emergency evacuation tests and requirements show how fast deplaning can be if excessive baggage is not a requirement and more doors are available:
http://www.wired.com/2008/08/as-your-flight/
Reduced separation and capacity example based off planned improvements to Newark:
https://www.faa.gov/airports/plannin...ofile-2014.pdf
Pilotless planes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/sc...ut-pilots.html