I've heard that before, that the US apparently loves above ground power lines. In NL it's only the long distance ones that are above ground. Even in most rural areas, I think everything is below ground.

Yes, we love them on account of our country having approximately 230 times the surface area and the Netherlands having approximately 13x the population density. We not only have vastly more line to run, but also many, many fewer people per square mile to absorb the costs. Underground line is expensive.

It turns out that the fires caused by above ground power lines are also quite expensive, at least in certain areas.

https://www.firevictimtrust.com/

That explains rural areas but not urban areas. We've got above-ground in rural areas but pretty much all urban stuff is underground. We get maybe one power cut a year, usually for scheduled maintenance work, and no problems with surges and whatnot.

Yes, where the population density supports it the US has tons of underground.

Grandparent was talking about the DC metro area and Silicon Valley. We're not exactly talking about Montana here.

Expensive to install, less expensive to maintain.