That's entirely a California problem, not an America problem.
What about the rest of America?
There’s always someone who comes and tells us America is sparse so we don’t need HSR.
There are plenty of places where there’s sufficient population density and sufficiently close.
Look at this map - hsr is most useful for connecting nodes of mega regions that are often sparsely populated inbetween. Distance of about 600 miles or about from Canada to the southern tip of Nebraska. I can see many places it would work.
I assume that the infrastructure required to put in a real bullet train, i.e., double the speed or more, is cost prohibitive.
There are other routes where they would potentially make sense, such as between Dallas and Houston, where a Japanese company has been trying to put a 100% privately funded one in for a decade or more. I'm a rail fan and would love to see it.
However, nothing has happened and I doubt anything ever will, not because of Southwest Airlines (anymore) but because landowners are opposed to having their farms cut in half and Texas Republicans are (not totally unreasonably) afraid that it doesn't really have a business case and that it will go bankrupt, leaving the state either holding the bag for operational or cleanup costs. And as unpleasant as going through the whole flight routine for a 50 minute flight is, planes do get the job done. There are other things to spend money on.
I think that particular line would work (I would have used it when I made that drive regularly), but much as I love trains I think the critics generally have a point. The use case in America is very, very limited and quite possibly California is not it.