A 54-year-old Columbia man died Saturday afternoon in a head-on collision in the 2900 block of Forum Boulevard, near Wilson’s Fitness. Police say the crash happened around 2:55 p.m.; the other driver was hurt badly enough to be taken to the hospital by ambulance. Both directions of Forum were shut down for hours while officers worked the scene, according to the Columbia Missourian. The investigation is still open, and police are asking anyone with information to come forward.
It’s a hard thing to read about a stretch of road most of us have driven at some point — whether we live in Columbia or just pass through on the way to an appointment or a Mizzou game. And it’s harder still to learn, as ABC 17 reported the day after, that the city has known this stretch needed work for eleven years.
The Forum Boulevard Improvement project isn’t new. It was first proposed back in August 2015, and the plan on paper is substantial: widening the road to four lanes in both directions (with a possible fifth lane for turns), a new bridge over Hinkson Creek, roundabouts at Katy Lane and at Woodrail/Crestwood, medians at the spots that see the most crashes — including making the Wilson’s Fitness exit right-turn-only — plus better bike lanes, sidewalks, and a wider pedestrian tunnel where the MKT trail crosses underneath.
None of that has broken ground. ABC 17 reports the city now expects construction to start in summer 2027, with the project’s roughly $12.3 million price tag and scope cited as the reasons it kept slipping. Former Ward 5 councilmember Don Waterman told the station that Forum is now the only road in that part of town still stuck at two lanes each way. A Wilson’s member quoted in the story, Dylan Carter, put it more bluntly: people treat Forum like a highway. Current Ward 5 councilmember Christina Hartman didn’t respond to the station’s request for comment.
To be clear about what we don’t know: neither report has said yet whether speed, distraction, or something else caused Saturday’s crash, and we’re not going to guess. What we do know is that the road these two drivers were on is the same one the city has been meaning to fix since before some current Mizzou freshmen were born.
If you drive Forum regularly — to Wilson’s, to the shops nearby, or just cutting across town — this is worth keeping an eye on as the 2027 timeline gets closer. We’ll follow up if the city sets a firmer construction date, or if investigators release more about what happened Saturday.
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