Seattlites also talk up their light rail line. Ummm, yeah. The first MAX line was built in 1986.

Who wouldn't talk up a light rail line called the SLUT? (South Lake Union Transit)... just saying.

Isn't that the generic tradeoff between a larger vs smaller city too? I'll also be cursing the longer international travel times too.

You're right that this is trade-off is somewhat inevitable, but I feel like Seattle's traffic is disproportionately bad for a city of its size. Seattle is consistently listed as one of the top 10 worst traffic cities in America and is not even in the top 20 in terms of population.