This BBC News article describes something that Houston’s Katy Freeway commuters would support enthusiastically:

Commuters could soon be taking flying taxis to work instead of waiting in line for a street cab, experts suggest. British developers Avcen say Jetpods would enable quick, quiet and cheap travel to and from major cities.
The futuristic machines will undergo proof-of-concept flight tests in 2006 and could be ready for action by 2010.
As well as taxis, which would use a network of specially-built mini runways, there are military, medical and personal jet versions as well.
London-based Avcen say Jetpods would be able to travel the 24 miles from Woking, Surrey, to central London in just four minutes.
And because it could make so many trips, fares for a journey from Heathrow to central London could cost about £40 or £50.

Meanwhile, this Washington Post article reviews ongoing research into scramjet technology, which is already achieving incredible speed levels:

Next week, NASA plans to break the aircraft speed record for the second time in 7 1/2 months by flying its rocket-assisted X-43A scramjet craft 110,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean at speeds close to Mach 10 — about 7,200 mph, or 10 times the speed of sound.
The flight will last perhaps 10 seconds and end with the pilotless aircraft plunging to a watery grave 850 miles off the California coast. But even if the X-43A doesn’t set the record, it has already proved that the 40-year-old dream of “hypersonic” flight — using air-breathing engines to reach speeds above Mach 5 (3,800 mph) — has become reality.

Under NASA’s $250 million Hyper-X program, engineers at Langley Research Center here and the Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., designed and built three aluminum scramjet aircraft, each one 12 feet long and weighing about 2,800 pounds. . .
[The second scamjet flight] on March 24, reached Mach 6.83 (5,200 mph), shattering the world speed record for air-breathing, non-rocket aircraft, previously held by a jet-powered missile. The highest speeds by manned aircraft were achieved by SR-71, the U.S. spy plane known as the “Blackbird,” capable of flying in excess of Mach 3 (2,300 mph).