I was just looking up the LA to SF high speed rail project because the headline sounded so wrong. It's so sad that the official website has a giant photo of their progress: a short section of clean, straight overpass over a country road, with nothing connected to either end, an island of rail infrastructure plonked down in the middle of California. Sigh.
That's the first stage of any rail project - in California they have literally build hundreds of these unconnected bridges, viaducts and embankments. Same thing with HS2 in the UK.
Connecting them all up with rails and catenary is the (relatively) cheap, quick and easy bit, and it's done at the end - it's exactly all these structures (and the stations, which will likely be the next phase) that take all the time and money.
https://hsr.ca.gov/
I know that there are many factors affecting progress, but it's depressing that we can't get to consensus on building infrastructure.