TAYLORSVILLE – The Indiana Department of Transportation will seek community feedback and provide information about its I-65 Taylorsville Rest Area renovation project Tuesday, a project that includes making the two rest stops for trucks and eliminating car parking in the rest areas on both sides of the interstate.
The meeting will be at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday (doors open) with the meeting starting at 6 p.m. at the Ivy Tech Community College Community Room, Room 130, 4475 Central Ave., in Columbus.
The plan includes reconstructing both rest areas and reconfiguring the parking lots to add additional truck parking and eliminating car parking areas, which would bring capacity to 75 spaces for semi parking.
While cars will be able to stop at the northbound or southbound rest stops at Taylorsville, there will be no designated parking spots for cars. INDOT officials are directing those travelers to private options four miles north of the northbound rest area at mile marker 73 and six miles south of the SB facility at mile marker 68. INDOT says directing cars to these two areas, which are Taylorsville and the Indiana Premium Outlets, or the Columbus west-side exit, meets the federal and state standard for spacing between facilities for those in cars to have travel breaks.
Demolition of seven buildings is planned, including tearing down the northbound rest area main building, shed and vending area, and the southbound main building, picnic area, shed and vending areas.
All existing lights and signs within the rest areas will be removed and replaced to the latest INDOT standards. The existing right-of-way fence will be removed and replaced with a new 48-inch chain link fence. A noise barrier is also proposed along the right of way line on the north side of the northbound rest area, according to INDOT’s plans.
In its place, INDOT plans to construct what are described as “trucker toilet” buildings on the northbound and southbound rest area properties, along with a maintenance building on the northbound side, and additional parking on both sides of the interstate for trucks only.
Preliminary designs show utilitarian buildings, much like you would see at a truck stop, with an “vending area” entrance, and eight “trucker toilets” filling the remainder of each building.
Existing drainage plans will be maintained, however a conventional detention pond is proposed for the northbound rest area and an in-line detention will be on the southbound side.
Costs associated with the project are $16.4 million in state funding.
The existing I-65 Taylorsville Rest Area was built in 1975, according to INDOT. The two truck parking lots are undersized for current and predicted future capacity demands, state officials said. The northbound rest area currently has 37 parking spaces with an average 81% capacity during peak hours between 10 a.m. and 8 a.m. and the southbound rest area has 44 truck parking spaces with an average of 100% capacity between those same hours.
INDOT officials say lack of semi parking availability has resulted in unauthorized truck parking along the entire lengths of the entrance and exit ramps of both rest areas.
With this project, the rest areas will be able to accommodate a total of 75 trucks at any given time.
Construction is expected to take up to 23 months (to winter 2026), during which the Taylorsville rest areas will be closed to motorists with signage posted along I-65 alerting drivers of the closure.
