New electric cable in the wrong place?

Townhouse n'hood build in 1978. The electric company painted those
chalk lines on our yards, but then only dug in the center island on
the other side of a street/parking area from our houses. The lines
have washed away or gone away when the grass was mowed.

We have sewers under the sidewalk on the near side of the street.
Isn't that where the electric cables and phone lines are too??

Why were they digging on the other side of the street, in between the
two parking areas, 25 feett or so from where the sewers are.?


Details.
I live in a townhouse, and there is parking on both sides of the
street that goes in front of my house. Not parallel, not angle, what
do you call it when the cars pull in perpendicular to the sidewalk?

In this section, there is a shorr street parallel to part of my
street, just beyond my street from my pov, also with parking on both
sides. There is an island about 140 feet long, shaped like a
dogbone, wiith a wide part with bushes and flowers at each end and an
8 foot wide strip connecting the ends. It has grass and bushes and a
couple trees.

About 6 months ago, the electric company came and painted lines on
everyone's front yards One line parallel to the street, and other
lines going up towards their houses. Mine even went inside my fence
and only stopped when it got to a tree and bushes. I talked to the
guy who said they were repalcing the electric wires, that this had to
be done every 40 yearss or so.

Then a few weeks later, they showed up with a little backhoe and dug a
couple holes at the edge of the n'hood, and two holes in the island.
They dropped off a 6 foot spool of thick cable, and they were there
for a couple days, and left, and we didn't see them for a 3 months.

I figured rthat something more important came up, not maintenance but
an emergency repair somewhere, Right???? Although being gone for
2 or 3 months seemed strange.

But WHY did they dig so far from our houses and make no effort to
connect our houses? Surely they'er not going to extend every house's
wiriing to the center of these two streets, whch would mean going
uinder a two lane street with face-in parking on each side, an extra
25 to 40 feet.

And they put in 3 four-foot red plastick triangular pipes marking the
cable. Are they intended to be permanent? Do we really have to look
at these things? They look like there's a transcontinental gas line
going through the n'hood.