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[Friendstrange]

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Second cavern layer is dicovered. With two magma pipes!
An outpost is built. Magma workshops are secured.
Loose borders are walled off. Some are left and secured with doors, war grizzly bears and cage traps. Each season brings a bounty of various beasts. Some are tamed and integrated into the Fort. Others are used to train the new recruits and for entertainment. Forgotten Beasts are killed on sight with ease and no syndromes arise.
The disruption begins when a giant squirrel with poisonous blood apears. The dwarves quickly seal that entrance off and the beast is contained. The search for a GCS begins.
Three more Beasts apear in the area before a GCS is secured. The trap webbing instalation is made and cage traps are on their way to being webbed, even though it takes time.
Disaster strikes! A giant feathered tick with deadly necrotic dust apears! While the chained animals bleed to their deaths while stalling the beast the masons quickly seal the outpost from the rest of the cavern, preventing the dwarves from reaching the (currently caged) GCS.
The quest to recover the caverns begins. The forges roar as they spit serrated discs and steel spikes. The mechanics struggle to load the corridor with death machines.
It takes a gigantic moth made of coral to make the dwarves realize: weapon traps dont work against Forgotten Beasts. A massive overhaul is made and the discs are melted to be made into spikes. The weapon traps are replaced with spikes. The massive amount of steel spikes take up the last remaining reserves of steel and the weaponsmiths turn to copper to finish the trap in time. A green garnierite lever is installed in the main dining room, miles away from the traps. The mechanics once again run a marathon to link up the bridges as the dwarves wonder if the giant feathered tick will even take the bait of a juicy maple door and a war grizly bear on a leash once the whole thing is finished.
All the while this was happening, various sieges arrived but where quickly ended every time by the skilled hand of the Fortīs champions and the masterwork cage traps on every entrance. Many traders visited, interrupting work every time, but providing much needed steel and a way of getting rid of all the excess non-metallic equipment after ever siege.

What I am wondering is: Is there any way to safely optimize the MASSIVE hauling times that take entire years to fully finish? Because the arrival of traders and invaders already makes for a way-too-long interruption of work as it is, even though I need the precious metals each bring. I even have dedicated haulersand have made stockpikes closer to the things that need them butthey still take way too long.
Thoughts?

[Jhoosier]

It always seems they take jobs on the other side of the map, doesn't it?

My best suggestion would be to wall off the caverns, perhaps?  (Or use a locked door!)  You can dump food and drink and new metal down into the lower level to be smelted, ate, etc.  This should at least keep topside haulers up there, and the rest down below.  Not to mention, if something goes seriously wrong, you'll be somewhat protected and have half your fortress to carry on the torch.

[The Grackle]

I like to build a dump shaft from the surface down to my magma forges.  Toss down anything you want to melt.  It will save your dwarves a round trip from the surface to caverns, which can be either negligible or huge depending on your map.  I also build courtyards for my soldiers to lure sieges into. After the battle, raising bridges will atom-smash whatever I don't want to collect --socks and corpses and whatever.  That cuts out a lot of hauling.

But the first thing is to have a team of dedicated haulers.  People with useful skills shouldn't haul anything.  Leave that for the peasants. 

[Jhoosier]

But the first thing is to have a team of dedicated haulers.  People with useful skills shouldn't haul anything.  Leave that for the peasants. 

Is there an option to turn off the Bring Item to Depot, though?  It seems every time I have a ton of items to be brought, everyone right down to the armorsmith in the basement comes up to bring XX(troll fur socks)XX to the depot.

[AutomataKittay]

Have dedicated stockpiles near to where stuffs NEED to be, to shorten active hauling time for work. Turn hauling off for the crafters that you need to be cracking and churning, to keep them from wasting time. Use cages for invaders, instead, less mess that way, and you can selectively dump things, less hauling work, and you can quantum-dump right next to trading deport.

Otherwise, it's pretty much matter of sheer number of haulers. If you don't have enough, then it'll take forever to do anything anyway 

But the first thing is to have a team of dedicated haulers.  People with useful skills shouldn't haul anything.  Leave that for the peasants. 

Is there an option to turn off the Bring Item to Depot, though?  It seems every time I have a ton of items to be brought, everyone right down to the armorsmith in the basement comes up to bring XX(troll fur socks)XX to the depot.

Nope, not that I can see, that's what doors to workshops and it's stockpile are for, lock the doors while deport hauling is going on. I have a dedicated workshop area with it's own food and drink stockpile, and doors or hatches that can be locked down to keep the workers working while pond zone, animal caging/restrainting or trade deport hauling is ongoing.

[NecroRebel]

Your actual skilled laborers should, whenever possible, draw their materials from stockpiles that are very close to them, ideally directly above or below. Unskilled haulers should then be employed full-time to take more widely-scattered materials and bring them to those stockpiles for use. While it won't help for some projects - there's really no good way to link a large number of things to a lever if the lever is centralized and everything else isn't - it does improve efficiency. You should also have a large stockpile that takes everything that you'll want to trade away near your depot for the same reason; if 90% of the work is done already, the interruption when you need to bring lots of stuff to trade away is less.

Also, make use of burrows to maximize efficiency. You can prevent skilled dwarves from bringing items to the depot if they're restricted to a burrow that doesn't include it, and burrows can further aid skilled workers in not going far afield for their raw materials.

[Friendstrange]

Burrows indeed seems to be the problem solver. The only issue I see with that I would have to carve out a small fort down by the magma forges, complete with its own farms, still, dining room and rooms for my workers.

...yeah its doable. Thankfully I already have a floodgate system for magma and water installed so making the farm plots shouldnt be too much of a hassle and my miner and engraver team can clear out and smooth a whole layer in less than a season so making the rooms shouldnt take long. Three dedicated farmers/brewers/cooks should be enough to provide food and booze for the workers and the cavern squad and I could always set up a little elk bird farm with adjacent butchery to give variety to their meals...or just place my pigs and alpacas down there and let the topmost dining room get suplied with whatever wanders the topside of the map.

[AdirianSoan]

Actually, don't build a separate farms setup.  With the seed limit, one of the fortress halves can run out of seeds fairly easily.  (When you have 200 of a given seed, plants stop producing them when consumed/brewed.)

Use your dedicated hauler team.  Have a food stockpile and a booze stockpile in the lower forge fortress that (t)ake from the food and booze stockpiles in your central cooking/brewing/farming fortress.  (For this to work, you should be keeping your food, booze, and seed stockpiles separate; any given stockpile should only have one of these options enabled.)

You may want to have at least one hauler per ten lower dwarves (more if it's a further run) dedicated to hauling food/booze only, however; if your haulers get busy your lower fortress could starve, otherwise.