Yes, it is expensive to bury things like electric lines, and quite worth it, as the major storms last year did way more than that in damage to the electrical grid alone. And, isn't it interesting that so many seem to be able to do it?

The cost difference in super cooled transmission lines is about 3 to 4 time greater, but since you get to use all of the electricity you've produced, (billions and billions of dollars worth...) you've built about the equivalent of a couple of hundred billion, in new generating capacity.....

Often big numbers tend to be used to scare people, and it works real well, given the extreme levels of innumeracy prevalent in our society.

Return on Investment and Cost Benefit analysis should be the criteria for making these decisions. Therefore, if I can borrow that 5 billion at today's 3.5% interest rates, and you save tens of billions in repairs over 30 years, it doesn't seem like such a "scary" big number each year, and doesn't add very much to the rate base.

Since the double tracking decisions seems to meet ROI and C/B criteria it should probably continue, too.

Lots of things worth doing are challenging.