bill suggested i make the trackback links visible on the front page, for those who don't have tools that sniff them out of the page. (i can relate.) i didn't like the idea of just adding a link that would then be useless to most people, so i made it so the standard comments link also serves as the trackback link. (it uses the presence of the url parameter to detect that it is a trackback ping, and then does the right thing.)
this isn't particularly intuitive, but i think the audience of non-rdf-sniffing trackback users is likely to remain fairly small.
Ah, I didn't mean to suggest you put up the trackback URLs on the index, but perhaps on the individual entry pages, where they might be more expected. I think adding them to the index could definitely be distracting in your case, but hidden below the comments form could be a good place for it.
I think the solution you're making works out even better, as long as it's known that folks can use the same URL for comments and/or trackbacks (once this post scrolls off the page).