The standard over here is that if you cut a cable you pay unless you have asked for a free cable marking and then you only pay if you dig at the marking. If the cable is at the wrong location the power distributor pays.

You mean if ground level transformers and switches get flooded? Regular PEX insulated cables are water proof and most of them are also used in water, they even work better in wet ground when loaded since that provides a little cooling.

I have onle seen very short press release versions of cost comparisions. Cables won when comparing the whole multi decade life lenght, they do probably not win if the intrest rate is high. Cheap labour might change the calcualtion but the material cost should be about the same globally if you are a large distributor.

And there might be other reasons, people here dont like overhead wiers, they look ugly, farmers dont like to have poles in their fields and poles alongside roads is an additional traffic risk. Large parts of Denmark looks better then Sweden and one of the reasons is that the have cablified more. But the main reason is reliability during storms and the cost of having service people waiting everywhere. Power line building and maintainance is no longer local busines as it used to be over here and cablifieing is a technological way of providing the same kind of reliability.

Almost the only new power poles installed for voltages less then some 20 kV are where the ground is bedrock or full of stone blocks and there insulated wiers or cables depending on how you define them are regularly used. They can handle a tree leaning on them withouth interrupting service and if a whole forest goes down modern linkage breaks in a controlled way saving the poles, I dont know if the cables are tough enough to survive that. My guess is that damaged insulation is ok as long as the wire/cable are strong enough to be rehung in the poles isolators if you have a real emergency. In the same way as emergency 20 kV ground cables were left on open ground to get repairs done faster, this gave some fireworks when forestry machines rolled over them but I dont think anyone were killed.

Micro gondolas sound like a very fun idea to contemplate and calculate. I have read about simmilar compressed air tube-transportation ideas or micro wehicle in small culvert ideas. They have a problem with the capital cost for building the system. Your micro gondola system is unfortunately not something for where I live since it probably will have a hard time with ice on the powerlines.

My guess for future logistics is much more rail combi traffic with local battery or plug in hybrid distribution wehicles and probably manny packet/post offices to collect packages at the same time as doing other buinesses.

The local trend in Sweden is a now completed closure of most traditional complete service post offices over 15 years. Probably since the dismantling the cash only spare banking infrastructure in case of WW 3 and definately due to the arrival of internet banking overtaking the payment order system we used instead of cheques. This has been replaced with a more fine grained system of small delivery points in shops and larger kiosks for collecting packages and mail to big to fit in your mailbox.

In my home town is a small logistics central being established to recieve heavy trucks and repackage the deliveries to small biogas driven delivery trucks thus getting rid of heavy and awkward delivery traffic in the city center and saving a fair ammount of fuel. It is situated so that a railway spur can be added later. We are not yet ready for the second or third(?) try for getting light rail combo traffic going with small containers. And such a system is technically an easy one.

Could.   Most poles that are installed are ment to hold up wires.   Not the forces of a gondola.  

Go talk to the engineers at the power company and ask for the design calcs.  

Then, visit a gondola firm and ask to see the force calcs for their towers.

Also look about - how many power poles have 'gondola obstructions'?

That stuff looks like it requires a lot more real estate and equipment investment than my micro-gondola concept.

In some magical future where electrical energy replaces all oil, the power grid will need to be reworked.  Already, the present grid is overtaxed in parts of the US of A.  The ruf concept could house the expanded power grid, which would be needed for a electrial power grid transport system.

A "redo" with a ruf system makes sense if the power grid needs to undergo a large expansion of capacity, and part of tht new demand will be transportation.   Room temp superconductors stikes me as a reason for such a new buildout.   Or perhaps when nuclear power gets too cheap to meter eh?

Because you don't feel it is worth the time to consider, no one will ever be able to answer your straw man.

Oh wait.   If you think like a linear rail, stopping and staring is a problem.

http://www.ruf.dk/w_calc/la_calc/la9.htm
" At or near each rail crossing is a station and a multi branch rail access/egress point."    Guess THEY have thought of the problem.  

A nice RUF feature is the ability to move about cargo w/o the need for humans.   Like the 'micro gondola' idea.   I have yet to see the 'what works rail' plan for that.

In my micro gondola design, the gondolas could by-pass each other at any tower (appropriately configured). Think of it as a segmented line rather than a continuous line.

I'd bet there is an air corridor NY-DC (225 miles) or Boston-NY (215 miles) where the airlines could save enough money by "shipping" luggage over the gondolas to pay for itself in a fairly short time. Let's see...those "flights" take about 1 hr 20 min to 1 hr 36 min (gate to gate), add on waiting, loading, and un-loading will get you to at least 2 hours. So the micro-gondola would have to travel about 110 mph to make the same trip in the same time.