Can electricity pylons be beautiful?

A lot of the medium-voltage stuff is already underground in some areas. All new 50kV-150kV stuff has been going underground for decades, and the stuff remaining above-ground just hasn't reached its replacement age yet. Despite its drawbacks, above-ground is unpopular enough that burying them is worth it.

However, the high-voltage stuff (220kV & 380kV) is still almost entirely above-ground. Those cables are extremely difficult to construct, and anything beyond a dozen miles or so simply isn't technically possible yet.

So for earthquake prone areas, you will find above ground power pylons everywhere simply because that is safer and cheaper than the alternative.

Where disasters are unlikely, they tend to be underground.

And those tiny ground contact areas don't look cheap to stabilize.

If you design something well, it can be beautiful and functional and doesn't have to cost more.

But then I quite like big standard pylons, so each to their own.

But as part of nature? Set across an landscape otherwise made of plants and trees and hills?

For me, that's a million times no. I can't think of anything uglier or more jarring. The cold gray angular lattice skeleton feels like it couldn't be more opposite to all of the positive aesthetic qualities of nature.

Yes, the steel framing or reinforced concrete panels that would be needed to hold up the precast concrete sidewalk would be very expensive. You don’t need the entire conductor accessible anyways, that’s what tuggers and mule tape are for, pulling wire.

Also, all of the pipes would need to be supported from the underground concrete/steel structure and you would also need a lot of (expensive) expansion joints. Laying pipes in the ground and burying them lets the earth support them instead of pipe hangers.

There are some colleges/institutions to do use tunnels to run steam pipes through a campus, and they tend to build purpose-built tunnels for those. I’m not a pipefitter, so I’m unsure why steam pipes get their own tunnels, perhaps a MechE or pipefitter can weigh in!

Underground electrical feeder conduits (on customer premises, I only deal in the electrical world beyond the utility transformer secondary) are typically run in concrete encased ‘duct bank’, with manholes every so often. Electrical vaults/manholes are available as precast pieces that you simply lower into place.

Precast electrical vaults: https://www.ecbabbert.com/utility/electric-structures/electr...

I run electrical work and sometimes use directional boring to run underground conduits, it really depends on the pathway your conduit is taking. It boils down to whichever costs less, digging and restoring two pits and directional boring, or ripping up and restoring a surface so you can trench and backfill. If it’s all green space, plowing/trenching wins every time. Once you start crossing sidewalks and driveways and so on, directional boring tends to be cheaper.