Gavin Newsom likes to boast that California has the world’s fourth-largest economy. So why can’t it build high-speed rail, while Morocco — which ranks 57th — has had it for years?

“The California High-Speed Rail Authority recently awarded its first track and systems contract and will begin laying track later this year,” boasts a June 24 email from US High Speed Rail. “Trains are planned to be operating between Merced and Bakersfield by 2032-2033.” 

This contract, to Momentum Alliance Partners, marks “a major turning point in California’s high speed rail project.”

Californians are well aware of what the email does not explain. 

The total cost of California’s vaunted “bullet train” has surged from the original $33 billion in 2008, when voters approved Proposition 1A, to a staggering $231 billion, all before any track was laid. According to UCLA economist Lee Ohanian, the project was a fantasy from the start, but remained a favorite of recurring governor Jerry Brown. 

“We’ve got the money. We’re a rich state,” Brown proclaimed in May 2025. “We got $4 trillion in gross domestic product. Spain has less domestic product. They got one. France has a lower domestic product. They’ve got one.” As Californians should know, so does Morocco, a nation with a GDP of $194 billion. 

Launched in 2018, the Al Boraq Line, is the first high-speed rail system on the African continent. At 200 mph, the trains cut travel time from Casablanca to Tangier from four hours and 45 minutes to just two hours and 10 minutes. 

“For a foreigner, fares are cheap,” notes travel writer Phillip Mallis. So Morocco should be “a place on the list to visit for rail fans.” The initial stretch cost approximately $2-4 billion, and a major expansion is in the works. 

The $10.3 billion plan will include a line to Marrakesh and aim for completion before the 2030 World Cup soccer tournament, to be jointly hosted by Morocco, Spain and Portugal. At an estimated 217 mph, the trains will take only 35 minutes to reach Casablanca from Rabat, and Casablanca to Tangier will take only one hour and 40 minutes. 

Morocco collaborated closely with France on the project. The trains meet all European standards and future routes could connect Morocco with Spain and Paris. 

California’s bullet train aimed to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco, but even if completed as planned the train would have been slower and more expensive than air travel. Merced to Bakersfield is not a high-travel route for Californians or foreign tourists. The track, slated for 2032-34, has yet to be built and the bullet train has yet to carry a single passenger.

An African country in the so-called developing world easily outstrips the allegedly “rich state” of California. After nearly two decades, the so-called Golden State is all talk and no track. For Ohanian, California’s high-speed rail could be one of the biggest public policy failures in state history, but there’s another contender.  

Morocco collaborated with France and other European countries that had already experienced in high-speed trains. For the new span of the Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Oakland, California hired China’s state-owned Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries (ZPMC), which at the time had never built a single bridge. 

The project came in 10 years late, $5 billion over budget, and riddled with safety issues such as faulty welds, broken bolts and corroded rods. When Gov. Brown got word of the issues he said, “I mean, look, sh– happens.” Nothing like that from Brown or Gov. Newsom on the train that goes nowhere and carries nobody. 

California would do better to stop the rail project and use the money to build new roads, fix the potholes and add a third lane to Interstate 5 in the Central Valley. 

Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.

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