Hyperloop - cool stuff out of Sci-Fi novels!

'' Short of figuring out real teleportation, which would of course be awesome 
(someone please do this), the only option for super fast travel is to build a tube 
over or under the ground that contains a special environment. This is where 
things get tricky. 
At one extreme of the potential solutions is some enlarged version of the old 
pneumatic tubes used to send mail and packages within and between buildings. 
You could, in principle, use very powerful fans to push air at high speed 
through a tube and propel people-sized pods all the way from LA to San 
Francisco. However, the friction of a 350 mile long column of air moving at 
anywhere near sonic velocity against the inside of the tube is so stupendously 
high that this is impossible for all practical purposes.
Another extreme is the approach, advocated by Rand and ET3, of drawing a 
hard or near hard vacuum in the tube and then using an electromagnetic 
suspension. '' [source]