You need to see the larger problem
Your assumptions put no value on the cost of the travelers time or on the environmental costs of large heavy trains on large heavy tracks that are exposed to the elements. Or the immense complexity of building ever larger, heavier, slower jets which require ever larger airports burning kerosene in the upper atmosphere and necessitate a hub and spoke topology that virtually insures that smaller markets will bear the largest costs.
The maglev technology has been in use since the 1960s. The control systems to regulate a segmented evacuated tube would not be that difficult to implement.
The Boeing 707-320 went into commercial service in 1959. It cruised at 540 kn/hr, burned 6.4 gal/mi carried 202 people, had a range of 3800 mi and its cost in 2011 dollars was $35.5M.
The Boeing 787-8 went into commercial service (sort of) in 2011. It cruises at 490 kn/hr, burns 4.4 gal/mi carries 280 people, has a range of 7800 mi and its cost in 2011 dollars is $194M.
So after 52 years and $32B in development costs (just on the 787 project not counting the 727, 737, 747, 757 767 and 777 development costs) Boeing has succeeded in building a plane that is 10% slower with 2x the range and carries 80 additional people using 49% of the fuel per person as the 1959 707.
That is pathetic. If you would have proposed that to the engineers that built those 707s back in 1959 they would have laughed you out of the freaking building.
My question to a naysayer like yourself is, ???What is your brilliant alternative plan to move people at 3-4X the speed of present day transportation at ten percent of the cost in the most environmentally safe way????
