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.
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.