HISTORIC maps and reports reveal how Manchester's leaders were campaigning for rush-hour congestion relief almost a century ago.

The transport report was drawn up by the city council in 1914 to convince movers and shakers of the need for more tramways and traffic policemen.

It details travel times and congestion hotspots, which are strikingly similar to today's bottlenecks even though horse-drawn vehicles were the more common form of transport.

A series of maps from the report are on display, along with 80 other city maps from the past 220 years, at the John Rylands Library from June 25.

The Mapping Manchester exhibition also reveals how in 1945 city leaders planned to transform the city centre into a concrete modernist 'utopia' similar to Birmingham.

Curator Chris Perkins, geography lecturer at Manchester University, said: "The congestion of 1914 shown in the maps bears a strong similarity to the traffic hotspots of today.

"The technology may have improved but the speed through the city streets is much the same.

"It's amazing that it took up to 50 minutes to get to places as far out as Stockport and Timperley - a similar figure to now with heavy traffic."

The 1945 vision included bulldozing Victoria station.

"The council planned a modernist utopia of straight roads, wide boulevards, roundabouts and other civic buildings," said Mr Perkins.

Vision

"It was part of a 200-page vision for universal education, healthcare and low congestion.

"If they had got their way they would have bulldozed Victoria station, built a wide boulevard between the town hall and Deansgate and covered parts of the River Irwell.

"Manchester would have probably looked more like inner-city Birmingham than the winding medieval streets we know today.

"Thankfully as cash was so tight in the post-war years, the plans were never implemented."

Also on display will be Manchester's first planning maps printed 220 years ago for wealthy citizens who displayed them as a status symbol.

They capture the start of the massive growth of the city at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

An 1889 map of licensed alcohol sellers produced by the United Kingdom Alliance - one of the period's temperance societies - shows binge drinking was also a concern.

Co-curator Dr Martin Dodge, also from the university, said: "This fascinating map published in the Manchester Guardian was purposefully designed to show that the biggest drinkers lived in Manchester's poorest areas - just like today.

"It certainly provoked a strong response from correspondents to the Guardian who were outraged by the `low morals' of working people."

Mapping Manchester - Cartographic Stories of the City runs until January in the Historic Reading Room of the Rylands Library on Deansgate. Admission is free.