I think it'd be roughly an hour between Portland and Seattle, so a daily commute would be within the realm of possibility.

But I think what they mean is say Tacoma or Olympia to Seattle.

If the train have an average speed of >200mph it's likely to be a <55minute ride. It's not uncommon for people to have similar timed Amtrak rides in the North East as part of their commute. You can use a laptop to work on the train.

I have several friends that commute from Portland to seattle via bus or Vancouver to seattle via car or occasionally seaplane taxi. I’m sure they would really appreciate a high speed rail infrastructure particularly if it exits at a transportation hub as they propose.

I know people with long commutes, too. Just eliciting requirements for this project, which I didn't see stated.

I've had to do Boston to NYC a lot lately. I wish it was faster but frankly not really sure how much value is added by going faster.

US cities are still fairly spread out so for someone to be able to feasibly commute on it they'd have to be a short distance (both their house and workplace) to the train station. My unsophisticated take is that it seems like better local transpo would have an easier time of finding enough people.

It’s low-quality journalism. The actual report says that HSR competes with metro-to-metro air travel, and explicitly contrasts it to commuter rail. It says that when managed poorly,—for example, trying to serve too many communities—HSR ends up as an expensive version of commuter rail, which is a failure.