It's sounding like everyone's been a little overly optimistic about how the city of Santa Clara is going to handle the estimated 18,000+ cars that will arrive in town on game days once the 49ers kick off their 2014-15 season. There's been a lot of talk about the "ample" number of parking spaces available near the stadium, but almost none of that parking is stadium-specific, and a lot of it belongs to neighboring businesses that will make parking for Monday night football games impossible.

Matier & Ross jumped on the story, speaking, by way of example, to a rep at the nearby Mission Community College which is leasing 2,200 parking spaces to the stadium, but on Sundays only. None of those spaces would be available for Monday or Thursday games.

The 49ers have now announced that there will be no Monday night games for their first season in Santa Clara, and it sounds like this parking thing is still being hashed out. Other nearby offices, etc., will also be needing their parking on weeknights, and the city is building a parking structure for the stadium which will only accomodate 1,800 cars, or one tenth of what they'll need.

On the official website for the stadium, in the FAQs, the question about Monday night games was already put on there, and the official response, at least until recently, was:

Yes, there is ample parking near the new stadium site, which should allow us the ability to host Monday or Thursday night home games.

Football fans better get familiar with the public transit options to the area, which will include Amtrak, and VTA light rail.

[Chron]
[Levi's Stadium]