You can today in the Central Valley look at large construction sites and structures, some of which are finished. Go 100 miles up the alignment, and see construction and structures there too. None of those sites have laid track yet, but there’s hundred of miles of trackway under development.
It's understandable, and necessary, but it's also amusing that the CA HSR project has made (and opened) many miles of roads and bridges for cars and yet doesn't have any trains to run.
Of course, if they had started with a ten mile section of track in some place easy to drop in tracks then everyone'd make fun of it for only having two stations ten miles apart or something.
This is what zero miles of track looks like a year later: https://youtu.be/luX35wVJt84
You can today in the Central Valley look at large construction sites and structures, some of which are finished. Go 100 miles up the alignment, and see construction and structures there too. None of those sites have laid track yet, but there’s hundred of miles of trackway under development.
Track comes last.