Zen and the Art of Trail Maintenance

This post could also be called "the curse of 'recreational' paths." Basically, we had some bad rains and flooding in Davenport recently, and so when I tried to bike home from work I encountered this: And this was just the one that I bothered to dismount, photograph, and continue. Basically the whole Duck Creek Trail was like this, from pools of water across the entire trail to every underpass choked with mud.And unsurprisingly, I have some thoughts about that.1. Bike (and Pedestrian) Infrastructure Should Count This is the reason for that alternate title up there: because these trails get identified as recreational, the city (and not just Davenport, in my experience) acts like they don't count as infrastructure. They're just for fun, just for exercise, just for recreation. And thus when there's a storm or some other major disruption they basically don't count in the calculus of what needs repairing, cleaning up, or just general maintenance in the aftermath.But while it's easy to…