Plans for world's longest urban trampoline in London thrown out

Forget Blue Monday, London commuters are facing a heavy dose of Blue Wednesday today after City Hall made the despicable decision to dismiss plans to build the world's "longest urban trampoline".

Bounceway was supposed to be part of a £1.8m Transport for London (TfL) project trialling ten alternative ways of getting to work.

The corridor of bounce was supposed to be a fun and healthy commuting option. It was even supposed to have cushioned surfacing to "protect over-enthusiastic bouncers".

But the killjoys at TfL, the Greater London Authority and the London Assembly have decided that commuters are better off being huddled up on the Tube or crammed into a bus and have refused to fund the pioneering piece of transport.

Labour’s transport spokesman on the assembly Val Shawcross said: “Whilst it’s a shame it has been axed entirely, it was never an appropriate use of hundreds of thousands of pounds in transport funding."

Pfft. This from the same authority that spent £60m on a dangly cable car connecting two sparsely populated areas in the East End of the city that barely anyone uses. Outrageous.

Architecture for Humanity, the charity behind the idea, hopes the scheme could still go ahead for £75,000 and declared: "Bouncing is not dead."

Meanwhile, mayor Boris Johnson, in as good taste as ever, said he was disappointed that a "fatwah" had been issued against the trampoline by London’s transport commissioner Sir Peter Hendy.

Sir Peter retorted by reminiscing about his days using a Spacehopper as a boy in the 1970s: “If anyone could be convinced it is a mode of transport it is I.”

What a time to be alive.

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