>Yes you do. If the rail goes across any freehold, you'll have to negotiate and compensate for the owners loses. This process takes years if not decades. The only reason China is able to build so quickly is because the government tramples on people rights
Actually the Chinese government builds a lot of the high speed rail tracks on elevated tracks in order to avoid interfering with the owner. Which is why most of it looks likes this:
So it does seem like they're using tracks elevated by concrete pillars pretty widely, but are you sure your image shows a high-speed rail track? To my untrained eye that seems like a really aggressive curve radius for a high speed rail track. See also:
Yes, it's a high speed track. That's a Siemens ICE train (or a Chinese derivative thereof). A telephoto lens can create this visual effect of depth compression.
I'm flabbergasted by people implying that there's a good excuse for why the Western nations can't build HSR the way China does. China has entire lines like this that don't touch the ground for dozens of miles at a time. These lines are out in the country connecting major city centers, and I'm very skeptical that they disrupt any landowners in between. China has perfected the technqiue of low-cost construction of this elevated track. Meanwhile in California every property owner along the CA HSR right-of-way has the right to sue the state and claim not that they haven't been compensated (they have), but that there will be environmental damage (even though it has already been studied), delaying the construction and making it cost even more.
Many Western countries' ability to build large infrastructure is broken, because they give too much power to the landowners and unions.
Elevated track doesn't buy you anything over level track, at least in terms of landowner hostility. What makes you think that an easement for pillars is going to come any cheaper than an easement for continuous level track?
If you browse the image search results for "china high speed rail viaduct" it's obvious that it's a lot less disruptive than laying the track at surface level.
E.g. if it's through the middle of your field you can cross the track at any point, as opposed to going out of your way to get under a tunnel. Most of the land underneath the track can still be farmed, so why wouldn't it be cheaper?
Neither your or your parents photo represents "elevating the rails to avoid interference with the property below".
What's happening in these photos is that either there is a flood plain below the tracks and/or there is a maximum grade (elevation) change that they need to respect and so they are "flattening" the track with those pillars.
Those pillars are not there to be nice, they're there because of physical constraints.
"Laying track on viaducts is often preferred in China to minimize resettlement and the use of fertile land"
I rode across a lot of the country on HSR in 2013 and it was obvious that huge swathes (perhaps most) of the network is on viaducts.
Either China is about 40% "physical constraints" (which would make this high speed rail network an even more impressive and our lack of one an even greater failure) or they're actually there to be "nice" (i.e. avoid the need for resettlement/compulsory land purchase).
That's true. I've seen them all over north western China. although I know what the true purpose of them are. The pillar look pretty dense to me, so I'm not what to think about "avoid interfering". I suspect they are used to keep the rails level since the network goes thru a pretty wide range of elevation.
This is correct. Much of china is mountainous, so pillaring and tunneling are quite common to get the straightness needed for HSR. They also need to skip over urban areas sometimes, but that is more about traffic.
Here's a construction process used in China for long pillar-supported track.[1] That's an useful machine.
I wonder, though, how much time is wasted slowly backing it up to the staging area to pick up each new beam section. Maybe they sometimes use a beam carrying machine to bring more beams to the erecting machine.
Japan seems to prefer to build at ground level outside of cities.
Actually the Chinese government builds a lot of the high speed rail tracks on elevated tracks in order to avoid interfering with the owner. Which is why most of it looks likes this:
http://www.people.com.cn/mediafile/pic/GQ/20160229/56/325223...
If you have, say, farmland beneath a track you are virtually unaffected after that section of the track is completed.
They also build a lot of the stations on the outskirts of cities for the same reason (and then connect it up to the center with a metro).