alt Hacker News... The french contractors who built the tgv tried working with california in 2011 to build HSR here too. But they backed out, saying the bureacracy was too great and they were going to help Morocco instead. And guess who has high speed rail today? California or Morocco?
Morocco's high speed rail line opened in 2018.
That sounds like a made-up story, given that in 2011 the major impediment to the CA HSR wasn't bureaucracy, it was politics, and the CA HSR authority hadn't yet put any portion of the HSR rail out to bid.
Also, the French company (Alstom) that helped build the Morocco HSR is currently bidding to build the CA HSR...