HOPES of easing the burden of Manchester's congestion charges were due to be dashed today.

It all hinges on a bid to drop a plan for a third, inner `ring' just outside the city centre, which follows the route of the inner relief road.

If that happens drivers living outside the next band - the intermediate one - will have to pay even if they don't go right up to the city centre.

If the inner ring had existed they would have avoided paying provided their journey stopped before the inner zone. Area affected included Prestwich, Withington, Chadderton, parts of Ashton under Lyne and parts of Stockport.

Experts had been investigating the option of the third charging boundary.

But the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities was being asked to drop the plan - which came from a suggestion by Salford council leader John Merry - at a meeting today.

Sir Howard Bernstein, Manchester chief executive and clerk to the Passenger Transport Authority was expected to tell council leaders that a third ring would cost millions of pounds, increase congestion, and destroy the rest of the scheme as far as the government is concerned.

The government is being asked for £3bn in public transport improvements. The idea was not to charge vehicles in the morning peak which cross the intermediate ring without crossing the inner ring or which cross the inner ring but start their journeys inside the intermediate ring. The reverse would happen in the evening.

But Sir Howard said that the inner ring - which would cost £17m to set up and £3m a year to run - would charge just 31,750 drivers in the morning rush hour compared to 91,125 crossing the intermediate ring. That would be only half as effective in cutting journey times and would cost new jobs.

Sir Howard said: "The difference in outcomes of this scale would also undermine the case we are currently making for investment in our transport infrastructure."

And it would bring in up to £15m a year less in charges.

Because the plan is to borrow against those revenues, it would cut more than £300m from how much could be borrowed for public transport. Canny drivers would soon latch on to the idea of parking just outside the inner ring to avoid charges.

Sir Howard warns: "Such action would risk communities adjacent to the third ring becoming congested with traffic circulating to find car park spaces." Local shopping centre car parks would, he says, become full of commuter cars.

A third ring would `render the existing bid unsupportable in practice'.

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