[bob1029]

Power lines I don't get as a NIMBY concern. The other things I can see the argument. I bought a house partially because it has direct access to a pole mounted transformer.

I've had a lot of issues with last mile power delivery in residential areas that rely on buried lines and pad mounted transformers. If a transformer on a pole blows up, it can be replaced within 4 hours. Buried lines and pad mounted transformers can easily take 8+ hours due to the excavation requirement. I've had outages that lasted over 24 hours because of buried infrastructure issues. It's nice that it's all hidden until it breaks.

[tstrimple]

I guess it depends on what the common failure mode is. During the 2020 derecho our neighborhood with buried lines was without power for roughly four hours and it's the only time our power has gone out for any significant time in the 10 years I've been here. It wasn't even our buried lines that had the problem, but the lines serving them. Places in the city with poled power delivery were down for up to two weeks. There have been multiple times where houses surrounding us are out of power but ours just keeps chugging along.

[OJFord]

Mine's buried; was dug up and replaced overnight a few years ago. If it's slow I think that's just under-resourcing and scheduling rather than it actually taking that long to deal with the specific circumstance.