Expect eclipse traffic on Monday, Indianapolis officials say

Planners expect at least 100,000 people to visit Indianapolis for Monday’s solar eclipse, and they’re urging residents to prepare for heavy traffic and make their viewing plans in advance.

“There will be traffic delays,” Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Chief Chris Bailey said during a press conference in downtown Indianapolis on  Thursday morning.

Bailey advised observers to avoid pulling over along the roadside to view the eclipse. Instead, he suggested, either stay at home or plan to attend one of the city’s many eclipse-viewing events.

More than 60 eclipse-day events are planned in the area for Monday.

Bailey said his department plans to have officers patrolling the city Monday on foot and on bicycles, motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles. “These decentralized officers will allow us to respond to active incidents more quickly, since we know traffic on all our streets will be an issue,” he said.

Bailey said his department will also keep tabs on traffic by deploying drones at major eclipse events downtown and elsewhere in the city. The city will respond to traffic-flow problems as needed but won’t be doing any road closures or rerouting in advance, he added.

Indianapolis is among the cities that lies within the eclipse’s path of totality—the area that will experience several minutes of total darkness as the moon totally obscures the sun Monday afternoon. Across the U.S., that path of totality runs from Texas to Maine and covers a significant portion of Indiana, including Evansville, Bloomington, all of the Indianapolis metro area, Terre Haute and Muncie.

In Indianapolis, a partial eclipse begins at 1:50 p.m. when the moon begins to obscure the sun. The period of totality begins at 3:06 p.m. and lasts for 3 minutes, 46 seconds. The sun begins to re-emerge after that, and the partial eclipse ends at 4:23 p.m. when the sun is once again unobstructed by the moon.

During the total eclipse, the sun will be in the southwest portion of the sky at about 53 degrees above the horizon.

Downtown’s largest free event will be at White River State Park, which is calling its event the Lunacy! Solar Eclipse Festival. The event runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday and includes food trucks, lawn games, yoga classes, live music and free eclipse glasses while supplies last.

Visit Indy spokeswoman Morgan Snyder said it’s difficult to know how many people will turn out for Lunacy! since it’s a free and unticketed event. But she said planners scoped out the view of the sky on the property on April 8, 2023, to make sure that White River State Park would offer unobstructed views of the sun.

For those elsewhere downtown on Monday, Butler University astrophysicist Brian Murphy advises going to your intended viewing site an hour or two before totality begins to so you can identify potential obstructions.

“If there’s a tree or building in the way, you just walk a block this way or a block that way. It’ll be pretty obvious … you don’t want to be standing in the shadows at that point as you go into the eclipse,” said Murphy, who is the director of Butler’s Holcomb Planetarium and Observatory.

Butler is also having its own free public event Monday.

Murphy said he expects several thousand members of the public, in addition to Butler students, staff and faculty, to attend the university’s eclipse viewing event, which takes place Monday from noon to 4:30 p.m. outside the school’s planetarium.

The Butler event includes more than a dozen telescopes equipped with solar filters for viewing the eclipse, scientific experts who can answer questions, demonstrations, music, food trucks, and free parking at the university’s Sunset Avenue parking garage and at Hinkle Fieldhouse.

Butler will be selling eclipse glasses for $2 each while supplies last.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is hosting an event that’s expected to be one of the largest local gatherings. That event, which IMS is hosting in partnership with Purdue University, runs from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and includes a variety of programs and activities. The track is also one of three official sites from which NASA will be filming its live eclipse television broadcast that day.

Allison Melangton, a senior vice president at Penske Entertainment Corp., said IMS has already sold 50,000 tickets for Monday’s event, with attendees expected from all 50 states and 26 different countries.