I know all this and understand it very well!!!!!
I don’t know if you’ve been on high capacity gondolas in ski resorts, but the loading / unloading principle is much the same, except they are moving at about 0.3m/s. Two (or even three) loading concurrently. The critical constraint is that loading time - getting people through the doors, getting the doors closed, locked (and confirmed so), and getting the cabin up from loading speed to ‘cruising’ speed. Then the opposite at the other end, with unloading in a different place. Conceptually the operation is the same, but with a different technology for moving the cabin.
Let’s not also forget that the technology proposed by Thyssen is very very expensive, because of the linear induction motors.
Very deep railways in London are not going to happen.
I've been on gondolas in the Alps, basically they keep moving just at a much lower speed than when they are going along the main cable car runs.
The difference with the system that I'm proposing is that they would go offline from the main moving system and be able to be parked in a platform.
As such rather than it being a through platform, like you see at a lot of railway stations, it would be like that of a terminus station with bay platforms which it would move in and out of separate to any loading/unloading process. This would allow a car to be stopped for (say) 20 minutes to deal with someone having a medical emergency without impacting too much on the rest of the system.
It could allow the number of lift cars to be altered during the day depending on usage demand as they could be moved offline to a holding area and back again as demand drops and rises again.
Yes linear induction motors are very expensive, but then so were personal computers not that long ago (my parents first home desktop PC cost £1,000 about 25 years ago, now lots of laptops are less than that and inflation has devalued what you can get for your money. Likewise smartphones, I didn't have one until about 5 years ago due to the cost of them and running them, now it's hard not to have one). Given that we are taking about a line which is likely to be built at least in the late 2030's (at least 15 years away, maybe even beyond 20 years) chances are that the cost of such technology will have come down in price.
I often think that people forget about the potential timelines when taking about when things will happen and view things with what's likely now. For instance there's likely to be 10.3 million people in London in 2040 (+1.33 million Vs 2018) with growth within the South East adding to this pressure. As such, even without any changes in how people move about due to climate change, there's likely to be pressure for more public transport within London, given that the traditional methods of construction are likely to be difficult or not possible then something different could happen. It may not happen before 2060, but that doesn't mean that it won't happen.
For instance it's likely that once Crossrail 2 is built (and it's likely that it will get built, but it may not be within the expected timeline of early 2030's, see Thameslink 2000) that there'd be a jump in rail usage along the SWML. Possibly to the extent that there'll be a need to start considering the next rail upgrade, even though there'd be a significant increase in capacity from the extra 8tph from Waterloo.
You also have to consider that digging 80m long shafts isn't cheap and so if you can reduce the number of shafts needed the cost savings could be enough to justify the extra costs of the technology.
Of course it could be that there's a middle ground where you use a hybrid system so as to reduce the amount of distance for which the linear induction motors are used. For instance only using them for the movements at the top/bottom of the system. This could also bring the costs of the system down, although it could also limit the capacity of the up/down shafts.
