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I still can't work out why this is privatised.

And I can't fathom why you wouldn't just make a concept of a "service path", as such. That would consist of - a vehicular access road, electrical power supply, fibre-optic data feeds, gas lines, sewage and other drainage, "service path utilities" (i.e. for the direct use of street lights, traffic lights, etc. separate from everything else), spare ducting reserved for future use, service hatches/manholes and anything else that every road is going to need eventually.

I get why the old London roads don't have that to start with, but why - 60-80 years ago when we started to build proper roads and had to re-do lots of things and cable lots of new services into the roads, it wasn't just designed on a modular basis.

Then every road grows in proportion to the industries/households that it serves, redundancy and spare-routing in the road network results in the same on the data and power networks, you know that you can just put some new "quantum cable" through every road in the future should you need to, and every new housing estate built gets all services even if it decides not to utilise them.

Build it in as you go, until it's standard hardware through all the major routes and towns, and then you can literally just get used to expecting it to be there for everyone. And every time you re-lay a road, you can retro-fit, until eventually everywhere will be connected (very few vehicle roads are more than 50-years-old in terms of the tarmac on them, I should imagine, even if the road has been there since the Roman ages).

Basic communications, transport and utilities infrastructure should be part of the same process, department, procurement, maintenance, etc. That it isn't, I find very disappointing. And you just know that even if we got to "start again" (e.g. on Mars) we'd make the same mistakes rather than just make everything part of the same modular, standardised system.