I'm pretty sure rails are going to be faster in the future. Also, on grav tubes- for a simple single axis of travel tube, you really only a 1x1 tube. I'd much rather have in-ship player teleporters than what is essentially a pneumatic tube, anyway.
i am pretty sure it will totaly not be faster.....
it's not like they couldn't get the number higher...... if they wanted it to be faster they would have added it with the rail system.....
when the rails go even faster, there is also a possibilty of lag or physics problems, just guesses though.
if you want it faster use the speed computer, thats as far as it will go and probably as fast as it will stay.
teleport pad? thats freaking BS it ain't pretty and you can use it to cheat, just dock a ship on a station make the ship very very very very very very long put a teleporter at begin and side, remove the middle and you have free superfast transportation.
also even starwars and those sort of movies don't have such things.
together with that is that the scripting would be really hard, not so easy as you think at all.
if your ship is moving and you use the teleporter, it will already have moved a few blocks to hundreds of blocks.
programming this that you will exualy end up at the right spot will be way harder then just a same sort of thing as warpgate, they dont move.
about the lift, i don't know if i exualy like the idea but i'm pretty sure they won't add something that is already possible in 3 different ways.
otherwise they could also add such a docking thing people were talking about a time ago, an IRC or something. together with those things, it would be the first multiblock structure you can place, not counting paste mode as that is a bit different. i think that would give some extra problems with scripting and programming the things.