The Transport Innovation Fund (TIF) Study first set a number of transport objectives. These were:
- To reduce overall traffic levels by 10% (same as the school holidays)
- To provide high quality, safe and realistic choices
- To improve accessibility to services for all
- To be fair and equitable
- To reduce CO2 and address specific air quality issues
- To promote the economy of Cambridgeshire
It then explored different measures to see if they could meet these objectives. Measures included:
- Bollards on key routes into Cambridge (like Mill Road) to stop cars getting into the city
- Banning all on-street parking in the city
- Congestion charging
- Improvements to public transport
- Improvements to cycling and pedestrian facilities
- Improvements to the road network
The TIF Study concluded we would need a combination of these measures but that congestion charging was the most effective means of demand management.
Using bollards to stop cars getting into the city would reduce congestion in the exclusion zone but congestion would increase significantly on other routes, leading to a worsening of air quality on these routes. Also, there would be no additional funding to pay for improvements to walking, cycling and public transport, so people would not have a choice but still would not be able to use their cars.
Banning on-street parking to non-residents would not reduce congestion by 10% because there are still lots of parking spaces in car parks and work places. People would end up driving to and around nearby villages and parking their cars there, which would be very undesirable.
As well as concluding that some sort of congestion charge would be an effective measure for tackling congestion, the TIF study suggested that the fairest and most effective charge would be one that applied to people driving within and into-out of Cambridge during the busiest time of the day – the morning peak.
The TIF study informed Cambridgeshire County Council's bid to central government's Transport Innovation Fund.