To put this into perspective, China’s high-speed rail project in Indonesia connecting Jakarta and Bandung (a distance of 143 km) at a speed of 350 km/h was completed in just four months at total cost of $7.3 billion.
This line has seen an impressive number of passengers, with approximately 2 million people utilizing the service.
This is horrible. They are building a line connecting some small towns and plan to use it as a proof of concept? That could work as an engineering proof of concept, but without a guaranteed budget people are going to see it as a commercial failure and write it off.