Africa Has a High-Speed Train; California Doesn’t
30th July 2026
“Yes, you read that right,” enthuses California journalist Joe Mathews. “Morocco has high-speed rail. And California has excuses.”
At first glance, Morocco’s high-speed train, known as Al Boraq (“the lightning”), sounds pretty amazing. It goes up to 200 miles per hour. Costing just $10 million per mile, it cut the travel time between Casablanca and Tangier from 4-3/4 hours to 2-1/4 hours.
Up close, it isn’t quite as amazing. While the route is 201 miles, only 116 miles were built new; the other 85 miles was existing track whose top speed is 100 miles per hour. Still, that’s no more than $18 million a mile for the new construction. The average speed from Casablanca to Tangier is about 88 miles an hour, indicating that not many miles reach the top speed of 200 miles per hour.