What to Watch for on Super Bowl Sunday: Traffic

Michael Cabanatuan reports on the efforts of local officials, and NFL officials, to plan for the hordes of fans that will descend on Santa Clara for Super Bowl 50 this Sunday.

The NFL’s strategy for Super Bowl Sunday counts on adding hundreds of private charter buses, limiting the number of people allowed to ride light rail to the stadium, dedicating zones for taxis and Uber, and keeping looky-loos without tickets from hanging around the event.

Executing the plan will be a challenge. The suburban location of Levi’s Stadium, the lack of direct freeway access, the dispersed parking lots and a limited transit system have made getting fans in and out swiftly as tough as fourth-and-long for the 49ers.

Since Levi's Stadium opened two years ago, it's built a reputation for creating a traffic quagmire on any given Sunday—much less Super Sunday. The process of improving travel to and from the stadium is still very much a work in progress, according to Cabanatuan. Enter the Super Bowl.

Adding to the pressure are the painful lessons from a similarly suburban Super Bowl outside one of the country's most dense cities. Just two years ago, with the Super Bowl hosted in East Rutherford, New Jersey, the so-called "Mass Transit Super Bowl" fell well below expectations for transit users.