The Transport Innovation Fund (TIF) was a transport funding mechanism in England, that has been replaced by the Urban Challenge Fund in March 2010.[1] Its creation was announced by Her Majesty's Government in the July 2004 White Paper, ’The Future of Transport’.[2] The fund had two strands for supporting different types of project: Congestion TIF where local authorities bid for funds for their own schemes; and Productivity TIF where the DfT would identify schemes of national importance.
TIF represented a new approach by the Department for Transport (DfT) to allocating some of its budget for England. The fund did not apply to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland but they would not lose out because the budget for the fund will come from England’s overall allocation, calculated by a mechanism known as the Barnett formula.