Where the shinkansen passes through urban areas in Japan, the track is shielded from the surrounding area by walls. This is only necessary in places where the trains would be running at full speed (i.e. not near the stations). The barriers are not just to suppress noise but also to deal with the problem that at 300km/hr the shockwave from the trains could blow out windows in the nearest houses. Being Japan with its insane land prices there are houses built within ten metres of the shinkansen tracks -- and the shinkansen was there first.
I'm not sure about shared ROW as being a good idea necessarily though. The shinkansen system is as good as it is in part because it doesn't share ROW with anyone. A shared ROW could mean that the HSR schedule could be crippled by work being done on the other non-HSR tracks simply because the tracks run side-by-side. It would also require a lot more switches to route the trains across each other's tracks, and a switch that can take a train transiting it at 300km/hr is a much trickier proposition than a regular track switch. The shinkansen system has few switches in part for this reason, and most of them are close to stations where the trains are not going at full speed.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-03-04 11:15 am (UTC)I'm not sure about shared ROW as being a good idea necessarily though. The shinkansen system is as good as it is in part because it doesn't share ROW with anyone. A shared ROW could mean that the HSR schedule could be crippled by work being done on the other non-HSR tracks simply because the tracks run side-by-side. It would also require a lot more switches to route the trains across each other's tracks, and a switch that can take a train transiting it at 300km/hr is a much trickier proposition than a regular track switch. The shinkansen system has few switches in part for this reason, and most of them are close to stations where the trains are not going at full speed.