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Ahh, if only we were starting from scratch, with lots of money, and helicopters to get started with. :-) If you connect any two points on earth of equal altitude with a straight, evacuated tube and a frictionless track, and let gravity power the cars, they go anywhere in 42 minutes!
Overall, I think that reducing the need for long commutes and freight routes is the way to go, but it might still produce branching or grid systems with high-volume corridors. To get the best features of cars and trains in one system, small units can be combined into short railway trains under automatic control. They can be private cars that also have road wheels, or dedicated public transit cars that enter from stations. These stations could also dispatch cars filled with a few pallets of freight, robotically handled for most of their journey. The pallets, in turn, might be loaded with small containers or standard, bar-coded boxes for courier delivery.
To keep the merging lanes short from the road system, the entrance ramps could have progressively flashing LEDs, run by the RR traffic sensors. Stay beside a green zone of "moving lights," and you can merge gracefully.
One of my favourite pipe-dreams has been a transit device divided into a double or triple decker, so that people can drive on and off in velomobiles, and relax in their own space while on board.
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