On the East Coast high speed rail infrastructure has existed for over a decade. So CA is also trailing other parts of the US as well, considering that Amtrak has been able to operate Acela trains across multiple states on aging infrastructure for some time now.
Acela is awesome and I prefer it to flying when going from Boston to NYC and back, but you can really tell that the tracks are old. The ride is nowhere near as smooth as the trains in Europe, especially when you hit 150 mph.
