It's expensive, no one wants to pay for it, and our general political leadership is inept at best and corrupt at worst and is incapable of managing reasonable infrastructure projects.
Serious question: what are the benefits of burying cables? Purely aesthetic? Losing power less than once a year due to a downed line really just isn't a big enough deal to justify the expenditure. Even low-prob/high-risk event justifications aren't particularly compelling (there are much more important ways to harden the grid). If this went up for a vote in my muni, I'd probably be a "no". So many better ways to spend the money, even if we scope to just electricity transmission.
My read on this has always been that the US has above-ground cables mostly because it wasn't bombed to hell at any point after the discovery that it's nice to bury power cables.
Underground is safer, less prone to accidents (trees falling), take less space, reduces deaths and injuries by car accident (cars hitting poles), less maintenance due to not being exposed to elements, and of course the aesthetic aspect.
Honestly the aesthetic aspect alone should be enough. We care about the aesthetics of everything else around us and a lot of it is also fairly well regulated. Wires are absolutely hideous and it's perfectly feasible to bury them in most cases
Personally I find it so ugly that it ruins the look of everything. It makes me think that nobody gives a damn, and it makes me also not give a damn. Like if all the houses on my house had broken windows, I'd feel like I lived in a dump, and I'd be right. It's like nobody likes to look at things.
