San Jose's Tunnel Vision Challenge

If you could build a 1 mile subway or underground pedestrian crossing anywhere in San Jose, where would it be?  It's a tougher questions than I expected.

The Boring Company is going to build a free tunnel somewhere in the United States. They are looking for proposals up to 1 mile in length for a 12-foot diameter tunnel that can be used for pedestrians, utilities, a Loop, or any other use case. So this got me thinking, if San Jose were to submit a proposal where should it be?

At first I thought about connecting SJC with Downtown San Jose, but there is no way to do that within a mile. 1 mile isn't even enough to connect to Caltrain in Santa Clara. The only option would be connecting a Loop to a Lightrail Station on First, but that would likely not get a ton of use. Then I looked for options in various parts of Downtown to find the maximum utility you could get within 1 mile. Here was my best effort:

• Stop 1 - Diridon Station / SAP
• Stop 2 - Guadalupe River Trail / Adobe HQ
• Stop 3 - Plaza De Cesar Chavez / The Tech Interactive / Convention Center
• Stop 4 - SJSU Campus

For the ride vehicle, I could see something like the old DASH Downtown Shuttle. Even a 20-person AV that just goes back and forth between Diridon and SJSU would make it so much faster to get around Downtown and encourage more people (especially SJSU students) to take advantage of public transit. What do you think? Is there a better 1 mile option?

Source: Boring