Has there been any attempt to use an underground cable system, a la a cable car, to tow aircraft along taxiways? I've been looking at some proposals to try to reduce the time that an airliner's main engines are run at idle or near idle when taxiing to and from runways--a situation that uses non-trivial amounts of fuel and greatly increases local emissions.
I've seen proposals for fleets of tugs and onboard wheel motors, but I wonder if there might not be a simpler way. Why not use a continuously moving cable system, such as that used by San Francisco cable cars? Simply run a cable in a trench in the center of a taxiway, and have a means of attaching to and detaching from this cable as a way to tow aircraft down a taxiway and to the end of the runway. I don't know the details, but I do know cable car designers figured it out more than a century ago, so surely it can be done.
Similarly, one might also utilize a roundhouse system to rotate aircraft to the proper position to pick up the cable. Again, roundhouses have been used with trains for well over a hundred years, and locomotives are quite heavy. Clearly one would need ways to slow the cable speed at termini, but this is done on high-speed ski lifts. Some means of &quot;clutching&quot; to buffer a sudden application of force would also be in order--but again, think of the cable cars, or steam catapults/deceleration cables on aircraft carriers. It's been done. Surely it can be done in this context.
What's not to like? The benefits of reduced fuel consumption and emissions are obvious, and it beats a flotilla of tugs, by eliminating empty return trips, logistical hassle, and large numbers of staff. Also likely beats an onboard motor system, on weight, cost, and complexity. There are tons of reasons to do it.
Seems obvious to me. What are the arguments against it?
Way to go on thinking outside of the box. Actually, it might work. Although the logistics of it are above my pay-grade. Maybe, some smart group out there could make it work.
But, your question doesn’t ask for ways to make it works. It specifically asked for reasons it might not works. So, here it goes:

cable car feasibility over all does not have a great track record. If we were to make a Ben Franklin style decision graph of cable car systems that worked versus those that proved ineffective, Wikipedia lists a lot more defunct systems than it does working systems. All of which run on tracks.
If you get more than two runways at the same airport, the taxiway system become increasingly complex. An aircraft would need an alternate means of locomotion when switching from one runway/taxiway to another. The use of one continuous loop cable would be rendered impossible.
As Ron Beyer has pointed out, departing aircraft would still need time to warm up their engines prior to take off. Currently, that time is spent taxiing. Arriving aircraft would still need to power climate control systems. It would be a cheaper and more efficient use of time and resources to design a system that eliminates wait time between start up and takeoff. Keeping the traffic flow moving at all times without having to retrofit airports or entire airline fleets would benefit all.
Most cable car systems operate with cable cars of lighter weight and similar mass to each other compared to commercial aircraft. How would airports be able to account for the sheer mass differences between a single pilot C208 after a long cross country versus an A380 taking off at MTOW.
Power failure.
Power in night time IMC with four or five airliners about to break out at minimums for GPS approaches on parallel runways.
In the case of a constantly moving cable, an aircraft the size of an A320 could cause a lot of damage if it were not able to unhook itself from the cable at the appropriate time,
According to Wikipedia, the efficiency of a large cable car system is questionable. “Approximately 95% of the tractive effort in the San Francisco system is expended in simply moving the four cables at 9.5 miles per hour.“