Crystals should be used to alleviate transit time.

First let's get this out of the way and admit something to ourselves, lol: Traveling in Minecraft sucks... But we have the chance to fix this by taking a page from Re-Logic's Terraria and implementing pylons or something similar to pylons.
Take 9 crystals, form a crystal block, 63 crystals for 7 crystal blocks, and use those 7 blocks to surround a nether star and an end crystal(think Dispenser recipe) to create a pylon that can instantly teleport to a similar colored pylon anywhere within a 5000 block range.

Seems like a huge range, I know, but think:
You would require 2 pylons, so that means 14 crystal blocks, 2 nether stars, and 2 end crystals to craft a matching pair... Ridiculously expensive(it would be THE most expensive item in Minecraft by far), so it evens out.

You could expand upon this by allowing crystals to be dyed which would allow for multiple sets for even further range by daisy chaining, or multiple destinations... But it should only work in the overworld(as Nether travel with this method would be too OP, even with the expense of these items)