It’s 62,000 miles long to keep it taunt and the force equal at both ends. 26 days if you go all the way to the end.
However, payloads could detach at around 150 miles up and would be weightless. We could first haul up parts to make a fleet of reentry-less shuttles that can grab payloads at 100-150 miles up and bring them further (and a lot faster) to orbital space stations, etc. Fuel for the shuttles can go up the tether, too. And since the shuttles wouldn’t need to waste 98% of their fuel getting off the Earth, they could go a long ways hauling stuff around near-Earth to high-Earth orbit.
Bigger shuttles could be built up there in space for longer hauls, say to comets and asteroids for additional raw materials. Comets are big snow balls, full of ice that can be melted and using continuous orbital solar power broken down into hydrogen (fuel) and oxygen (life support).
I say it IS the future.
Gravity doesn't fall off that fast. 150 miles up objects would weigh 93% of their sea level weight and would fall to Earth like a rock unless they were sped up to 17,000 mph after their exit from the elevator. That's going to take a rocket engine and fuel. An elevator ride doesn't lower the costs much of putting a mass into orbit.