I’d love to see a separate unpaved skate ski path groomed along the creek routes. It could converge with the pathway at bridges and tunnels with snow classic tracks as we see regularly at our tunnels.
But, yes a plowed pathway with classic track sides would be more accessible and resilient.

(🧵🪡2+:2)
Maintenance try’s to clear the pack in the spring, but it is exhaustive and hard on equipment. Therefor we see unusable trails when folks are most wanting to get outside, the roads still have lots of gravel and muck on them, and drivers are testing acceleration limits of newly dry roads.

Although this is a weird (new normal?) weather year, every year the compacting snow strategy leaves our urban trails with a heavy base of snow and ice. This leads to weeks/months in the spring where our safest non motorized arterials are deep slush and ice and aren’t really usable to anyone (🧵🪡 2:2)

The weeks of solid ice greenbelts calls into question the resilience of grooming them for skate skiing. Imagine a cleared pathway with classic sleek tracks on both sides. Much more useable to the vast majority of user groups.