I don't think you're wrong. Every time someone says we can't do high speed rail it makes me very sad. And as far as Seattle goes... my commute is substantially affected by the I-5 closures. It's somewhat shocking to me that we allow infrastructure to decay as much as we do.
I'd be happy about the light rail expansion if they weren't talking about delaying the Ballard line indefinitely. :(
The commute is slow because the light rail is slow. It's the wrong technology for commuter rail and there are too many stops. (I'm assuming you live north).
(more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47457884)
Can't do highspeed rail because it's too impractical and expensive, while we're spending a west coast highspeed rail network worth of money on the least popular war in US history.
California is spending the money and what they're building is useless (oh big passenger demand from Merced to Bakersfield, fuck right off with that) and costs 10x what China, France, Japan, etc pay.
Evidently tax cuts for the wealthy are more important than infrastructure.