Getting Arlington to recognize and *maintain* our mainline (WOD, Custis & FMR) trails as transportation arteries is an ongoing project of the BAC (that we can always use help with). Beyond funding (the biggest challenge, by far), there are a few practical obstacles to getting decent winter maintenance. First, unless you plow right away, you’re faced with compacted snow the next day – which turns into nasty ice during the melt/refreeze cycle that comes in the days after. Aside from manually chipping away at it, the only other solution is salt (which is, in my view, a net negative – I’m not interested in wrecking the soil around the trails). This isn’t a problem on major streets because of the heat of exhaust and the continual passing of cars. Finally, as one or two of you may have noticed, there’s plenty of buckling on our trails. It’s pretty tricky to usefully plow a section where you can’t consistently get the blade on the pavement.*
*And we’ll just ignore the matter of the demonstrated skills of Arlington’s plowing crew on the streets. They must import them from Florida.
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