Yes: Seattle/Portland/Vancouver BC via plane take only about 45 minutes of actual flight time, but 2 hours or so of hassle going through airport nonsense (more if you cross the border).

The drive is two hours, but a waste of gas and time if you're only going for a weekend. Highspeed rail is the perfect intermediate and at a reasonable price (read: $100 or so round trip) would be well more than enough reason to ditch my car for basically all trips greater than 100 miles.

Just because there are some places in the USA where highspeed rail doesn't make sense doesn't mean that argument extends to the whole country.