Yeah. I'll usually take commuter rail in for the rare 9-5ish stuff because it's such a lousy drive. But catching one of the very few later trains, especially if I have to time it with the subway, just doesn't work and it's usually a <1 hour drive anyway at that time of night.

I'm also pretty far out and not all the trains run that far.

The MBTA already runs top speed on most of its lines once you get outside of roughly I95 depending on the line. Getting there faster would help but I don't think it would shave as much time off the end to end trip as you think. And for the urban stops they already accelerate and brake at the limit of what is reasonable for standing passengers. They can't push it too much or an old lady is gonna bounce off a wall and get a nose bleed and that's a bad look. It's not like Acela where a ticket guarantees a seat.

There will definitely be some improvement from electrification but I don't think it will affect median travel times much and the affect on average will mostly be from reliability.