See my suggestions 2-4 and 11 in "General Usability Suggestions". A lot of elements are hardly ever used. I think those would fit your criteria of reducing amount of time to get to the element without being too cluttered.
Yeah. Completely agree. It's great that they are there, but having a menu where it is sometimes hard to navigate elements is annoying. If you can switch layouts, everything will be easier.
I think we should be able to choose which elements we want visible therefore we only use the ones that we want/need, THEREFORE we have enough space! :D Problem solved!