It sounds like the Clark County restrictions are a very cautious conservative requirement for an untested system. They don't want a tunnel full of burning Tesla

It sounds like the Clark County restrictions are a very cautious conservative requirement for an untested system. They don't want a tunnel full of burning Teslas on their hands. I don't think this whole concept should be dismissed out of hand. Obviously autonomous driving is in the plans - and presumably if the concept is successful they'd develop their own vehicle more suitable for public tranist. Why not a railway? It seems to me the Boring Company are essentially shifting the complexity from the fixed tunnel equipment (rails, signals, points - all the stuff you get in standard railways) into the autonomous car. Whether that's cheaper overall is yet to be seen - but it may well be. Subsurface railway is notoriously expensive (and the tunnel boring part is just the beginning - the fitout is also incredibly expensive). If they can move as much as possible into a factory environment and make the tunnels not much more than a concrete tube, they're going to significantly reduce the cost. The only big downside of this approach that I can see is the efficiency of the vehicles - rubber tired cars or buses are less efficient than trains.