Why do you presume less "lobby time"? I'd think a train twice as fast as a plane would inspire at least as much security theater.
It's amazing how easy it is to get in and out of different countries. Even getting on the ship is pretty easy.
I don't think there'll be much security theatre until a train gets blown up - most of the theatre so far seems to be reactive. "An idiot has explosives in his shoes. He is so incompetent that he tries to light it with a match" and now everyone has to take their shoes off.
TSA security checkpoints suck, but IME they "only" represent about 15 or so minutes of the extra time required for airport lobby time (on average; sometimes more sometimes less. Which is at least 14 minutes too many, but hardly the whole 1-4 hour overhead often cited).
Most of the overhead of plane travel in terms of airport and tarmac waiting time is due to deadlocking problems that occur in coordinating all the passengers into a single vehicle that is as full as possible (to maximize the airline's profit per trip), so you get a very uneven/lumpy demand curve based on when flights are scheduled, all sorts of complexity due to the system of having to check bags into a separate physical compartment, etc. A continually operating system where you could just show up whenever, your bags stay with you for the ride, etc could easily smooth that out. Solve the deadlocking issue (and most of the hyperloop guesses I've seen do) and even if the security checkpoint stuff stays mostly the same you'll still have a far more efficient embark/disembark system.
Times always add up like this - 0.5h to get to the airport, 1.5h on the airport, X h of flight and then up to 0.5h to leave the airport and another 0.5h to get to the city.
I'd like to think that if Elon were running it (doesn't look like he wants to though), it wouldn't be a problem. He's a brilliant engineer who designs systems to overcome difficult problems. The 'security theatre' is just a consequence of an extremely poorly-designed system. I'm pretty sure someone like Elon could exploit modern sensing equipment and AI/ML techniques to build a system that is demonstrably better than, say, the TSA, and doesn't require anyone's personal space to be invaded. Who knows - maybe we'll get lucky and 'secure, 90 second check-in' be an integral feature of his design?!
... so we'll do it with trains because no one will stop us?
(faulty social analysis)
You could perhaps... stop it?
And if you really want to cause havoc messing with trains, you go for cargo trains filled with hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic chemicals.
and then plowing into a strawberry field near Coalinga. Yeah, that's "a lot" of damage.
You are right that it would take less power.