Judging by the location it crashed and somebody interviewed saying that "they were afraid it would hit the vehicle below", it careened down for quite a distance since it crashed near the bottom.
Mind you, that specific funicular doesn't actual travel that much of a distance (maybe 400m if I remember correctly - it's been a long time since I had a reason to go to that part of Lisbon).
Also because it's not that long a distance, it's actually faster to just walk it up or down for most people than wait for it, plus this was the one coming down (as deduced from there being one below), so it's quite likely that most people in it were tourists.