After the election, California (yes, that hellscape) will continue to move the world forward no matter what

It would be one thing if this was just a history lesson. But the same kind of dynamics are playing out right now in a few crucial arenas that virtually no one outside of California is talking about. And I’m happy to report that the America taking shape on the Pacific coast is once again coming up with solutions much faster than conventional wisdom has assumed.

I was optimistic about these emerging transformations even before Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president. If she wins, what she knows from California will likely influence her approach to the country and the world. Her Californian character is one of the least talked about but most important aspects of her, including the optimistic approach to today’s diversity and tomorrow’s opportunities that is such a contrast to Donald Trump.

But if it doesn’t get that far, California will likely move on with all the more purpose and cling to the national example of how things can be done differently. Whoever leads national politics, California deserves new attention as the “reinvention state” rather than a “resistance state.” Even under Trump, there’s still a good chance that, like California, the country, and eventually much of the world, will eventually do so. Here are a few illustrations of where things are going. None of these are “the” solution to California’s many problems. But each of them illustrates the creative spirit from which solutions always emerge.

Train to somewhere

Let’s get back to the thread of transportation first: By now, of course, California’s pioneering highway system, built in the 20th century, is a maxed-out, congested mess. And the state can’t build more highways; there is no more room where they are needed, and all built spaces become full as soon as they are opened. Without new forms of transportation, the state will become increasingly paralyzed and all its other problems will be exacerbated. That’s why California voters in 2008 approved an initial bond issue of nearly $10 billion to build a high-speed rail line that would eventually run some 500 miles from Los Angeles to San Francisco, through the Central Valley corridor. That was 16 years ago. If you’ve heard anything about this project since then, it’s that it’s a white elephant, a doomed relic, a cautionary lesson, and whatever other metaphor for failure you can think of.

And yes, the list of complaints is long. The project is well over budget (about $100 billion) and far behind the original schedule. Parts of the line are already operational. As it stands now, first service isn’t expected to begin until 2030 — and then only on the 170-mile stretch from Merced, in the northern half of California’s Central Valley, to Bakersfield, on the south side. This abbreviated initial route has been called a “train to nowhere,” an insult that hits home for those in the Central Valley but reflects the frustration of people stuck in LA or Bay Area traffic. And given the way the entire funding-hungry project has become the subject of the culture wars, it’s no wonder the project seems to many as remote and unlikely as human settlements on Mars.

But I’ve been following the back and forth for more than a decade, and I’ve come to see California’s high-speed rail project with a new clarity. In the aviation world, pilots are trained to recognize the point of no return, when you’ve gone so far that if you went back you would only lose. That’s where California is with high-speed rail. Consider a few recent facts: This summer the project received full “environmental clearance” for the entire 470 miles from downtown LA to downtown San Francisco, with another 30 miles from LA to Anaheim expected next year. Nearly all the thousands of necessary plots have been secured. Construction work in the Central Valley is much more advanced than most people realize: some 12,000 people have been working there for a long time and the test trains should start running in three to four years. And what hasn’t sunk in yet is that, when completed, this will be one of the fastest high-speed mainline rail systems in the world. (At a speed of 350 km/h it would beat the 320 km/h range of European trains and Japan’s famous Shinkansen, or equal the fastest stretches of the Beijing-Shanghai line in China.) Not only that, in a California’s would be a global first. The system will use solar-generated electricity the entire way.

Over the past ten years I have visited Fresno, the largest city along the original route (population 545,000), about ten times. There and in the surrounding areas you can see the trail taking shape month by month, mile by mile. You see the kind of gigantic, heavy-industrial construction projects I remember from my life in China, when a new subway line seemed to open every month. You see earth-moving machines that are bigger than school buses; concrete bridge supports as long as airplanes.