Councilman proposes reducing traffic lanes, creating bike lanes on Forum

A Columbia city councilman is proposing that the city reduce a four-lane section of Forum Boulevard to two lanes instead of widening the street.

The idea stemmed from the city’s Bicycle/Pedestrian Commission after a lot of pushback to the council’s idea of putting a roundabout at Forum and Green Meadows. Councilman Ian Thomas recently wrote about the proposal in his newsletter.

The commission proposed the idea of separated bike lanes on Forum between Green Meadows and Woodrail.

“This was their suggestion to do a temporary bike lane project on that four-lane section,” Thomas said. “There are two-lane sections both to the north and south of it so the four lanes are not really required, at least for traffic capacity at the moment, so it would be an interesting experiment.”

Thomas said the city’s long-term plan is to widen all of Forum to four-lanes, a project estimated to cost nearly $13 million. Thomas, however, doesn’t feel it’s necessary.

“It’s always important to plan for the future if the future requires additional traffic capacity,” Thomas said. “But I’ve researched the MoDOT vehicle count data along Forum over the last 20 years and there is absolutely no evidence of growth. The number of vehicles per day has stayed about constant since 1997. And that number of vehicles is easily accommodated by one lane in each direction.”

Since he explained the idea in his newsletter, which he said goes to about 2,500 people, Thomas has gotten about 100 responses. He said at least two-thirds have been positive.

“If it doesn’t work, if there are problems with it, then it can be easily reversed,” Thomas said. “But we could do a pilot project for maybe six months or 12 months to see how that goes.”

Thomas said he thinks the experiment would benefit those who want to commute via bicycle from the south side of town to the MKT trail. Forum currently has bike lanes south of Green Meadows.

“But then that next section has two vehicle lanes in each direction that are quite narrow and as a cyclist, I know I don’t feel very safe riding along that section,” Thomas said. “If there’s a car in my lane and a car in the other lane, that’s kind of a tight squeeze.”

After Woodrail, the city is in the process of resurfacing the shoulder with a painted bike lane that eventually connects directly with a new bicycle/pedestrian pathway that leads to the MKT trailhead.

“The data show very clearly that the trail system is one of the things that draws people to Columbia more than anything else,” Thomas said. “People that live close to trails have a very high level of satisfaction with their location. Many of them bought their homes because of the trail. So I think that creating these safe and attractive protected bike lanes will have a similar impact on the neighborhoods close by.”