As an engineer who has worked in both the design and construction side of utility work in NYC, allow me to explain why utilities are such a big problem. Every u

As an engineer who has worked in both the design and construction side of utility work in NYC, allow me to explain why utilities are such a big problem. Every utility not owned and operated by the city or MTA must pay the city for use of their right of way, meaning streets and sidewalks, in between property lines. If a utility were to operate within outside of the right of way in private property they would have to pay the property owner to use the land As an easement. A utility company has an agreement with city and pays the city on those terms to move the facility when told to do so at own cost (gas lines are exempt because they are international lines). It also must pay contractors when working near those lines for the discomfort they cause. Utilities don't just have conduits or pipes running down, but also manholes and chambers, and some of them are huge. I once came across a 90' x 60' x 40' underground substation. These chambers cause other utilities to avoid them by switching lanes and going to the sides. These switches cause greater infrastructure density, or more pipes in an area. For places like manhattan, telephone company requires more conduits and wires in every street than any where else. Some companies insist in a conduit just for themselves, like Amazon AWS to run their own services. Parallel to that are electric lines that require large pipes for the huge area it serves. Same goes for gas main and the next annoyance e.g. Steam, which is difficult to move around. If the city were to come and build something, pretty much everyone has to move things around. This is what causes a significant spaghetti buildup. Eventually, it becomes virtually impossible to locate or record location of everything. Add to that the age of records and the frequent loss of records. Designing utilities is an art of patience. Constructing around them is far worse. Recording them is poorly done. I was very peculiar about accuracy of records but even I had to sometimes wing it. And I am pretty sure few take the time to painstakingly record and draw stuff like I did. Problems like this make me imagine that all utilities should be placed vertically in a chamber easily accessible and maintainable. But that is naive.