Cambridgeshire CC is set to make a bid to the Government's Transport Innovation Fund (TIF) for £500m to ease congestion in Cambridge. Councillors have voted in favour of the bid to the Department for Transport (DfT) for the cash, after details of a two-stage application were agreed by the authority's cabinet last month. Initially, Cambridgeshire will ask for early confirmation of DfT funding for a proposed new railway station in Chesterton. The council want to bring forward plans for the construction of this project by three years, to start in 2012. The second stage will see a bid for the remainder of the £500m package towards the end of 2010. This will rest on a congestion trigger point being agreed between the council, residents and the Government. According to the authority, the congestion charge should only be considered as a last resort, and only introduced if the trigger point is reached after the transport improvements have been made, post-2017. Introducing a congestion charge is one of the DfT's pre-conditions for local authorities making bids for TIF funding. Roy Pegram, Cambridgeshire's cabinet member for growth, said the bid was a unique opportunity to ‘unlock record-breaking funding'.
