To put this into perspective, China's high-speed rail project in Indonesia connecting Jakarta and Bandung (a distance of 143 km) at a speed of 350 km/h was completed in just four months at total cost of $7.3 billion.
This line has seen an impressive number of passengers, with approximately 2 million people utilizing the service.
Failed state
Oh, don't let them make you believe for a second that they are actually incompetent. They've been dragging their feet for this, looking almost pleadingly at the California people to beg them to make them stop ever since they voted on it. Sure, high-speed rail projects unfortunately have a bad habit of going over-budget, but this is obvious weaponized incompetence.
Its by design. When the 10 freeway in downtown LA got damaged in a fire and it was speculated that repairs would take months to reopen the freeway (for perspective the freeway does through the heart of DTLA and connects a lot of vital areas of the city with rachother)
They had it fixed in 5 days with enough political pressure.
They could have a series of high speed public transit all over the state if they wanted to, its not a question of resources since Los Angeles and California as a whole is a very very wealthy and resource rich state.