You're not waiting in line for a ticket. You're waiting in line to get through security and to board the capsule. This is one of SWA's core optimization problems, and door-to-door times for SWA are still swamped by human-factor airport issues.
You can't wave a web browser around as a magic wand to solve these problems.
>and that wait will be determined by the volume limitations of the hyperloop
This is what led me to believe he was talking about standing in line for a place in a capsule.
Why is the wait for security determined by the volume limitations of the Hyperloop? Isn't that a function of demand, security lanes, and space to fill with waiting passengers?
I print my boarding passes at home (or use Passbook) and never check luggage, so the only line I deal with is security.
Passing through the checkpoint itself takes ~90 seconds. The other 20-90 minutes is waiting for the queue in front of me to be processed by 1-2 lanes working in parallel. If the airport had a wide enough hallway and a big enough payroll, why couldn't it run 10-20 lanes and cut down the wait by an order of magnitude?
Obviously the federal government doesn't choose to spend money that way, but it could - regardless of the seating capacity of the aircraft. In fact low-bandwidth aircraft make the problem easier because fewer people need to depart at once.
I trust that you know what you're talking about when it comes to security, but I don't see it. Why does Hyperloop's low bandwidth make the security line problem worse than HSR?
The HSR plan doesn't involve TSA-style security checkpoints. The Musk plan explicitly does. HSR trains have derailed in the past with minimal fatalities. The expectation is that the same scenario on Musk's trains would be catastrophic.
Generally around 5 minutes off peak, and 10 minutes at peak flying times. Then again, I don't fly to the USA much and so don't have to deal with the TSA. Security in the rest of the world is not much of a problem.
You can't wave a web browser around as a magic wand to solve these problems.