In this scenario, a waitress who lives in Alhamba, a city about nine miles from downtown Los Angeles, wants to visit her family in San Francisco.
Here's how long it would take her to get to San Francisco by airplane.
She lives 21 miles from the airport.
It would take her 45 minutes to get from her house to Los Angeles International Airport.
It would cost $3 and require her to use several modes of transportation.
This is a network of Hyperloop stations and tubes proposed by Hyperloop Transportation Technologies.
The tube network would connect stations that would be departure points for passengers going to cities like Las Vegas, San Francisco, and San Diego.
If she wanted to get from her home in Alhambra to San Francisco, she could start at the Hyperloop station that takes passengers to Las Vegas.
And then take a five minute journey through a tube to the departure point for San Francisco.
It would take her 15 minutes to get from her house to the departure point for Las Vegas.
This 15-minute leg would be one of the longest parts of the trip.
From there, it would take only five minutes — and cost only $11.77 — to get to the departure point for pod going to San Francisco.
From San Francisco, it would be a 30-minute journey.