However your are rather short sighted in your rejection of the proposal. High speed rail is also used for freight, Australian railways move one billion tonnes of freight each year, 95% of which is Australia's mineral and agricultural produce.
My understanding was that these things are stand alone High Speed systems which don't run standard trains on them just the high speed stuff. If it was a combined slow/high speed train on the one network that is a different proposal. And yes you are correct re the freight.