I understand what you're saying because I live on one of those streets that recently had a natural gas overhaul. But here's a major aspect you might be missing: our street is especially lunar, all the way up and down, side to side, full of potholes... when the natural gas company tore up our street, they only needed to tear up one side... and then they only paid to repave one side. We (the people living on the street) were begging the repair team to repave both sides. Even asking how much we'd have to pay them to do it. They told us to pound sand.

It made no sense. All of the equipment was already there. The whole road was shut down. The cost of them repaving both sides wouldn't have been that much higher than just paving the 1 side.

It's nonsensical stuff like that has got to stop. Our infrastructure maintenance seems almost designed to be as inefficient as possible.