The cheap car parks which sprung up around the city 10 years ago 'will soon be gone' a transport boss has predicted.
Currently, drivers hunting for a cheap parking spot are generally able to find one around the boundaries of the city centre for as little as £3-£5 a day.
Many of the lots are run by private land owners, with some run by larger operators like NCP, offering motorists a bargain option when compared to Manchester Councils parking fees, which average £3 an hour.
On Store Street within 500m of Piccadilly station, for example, NCP have a car park charging £5 for 12 hours and it's generally full - a picture repeated across the city centre.
But as more developers move into the city centre - and with the planned reboot of Piccadilly station thanks to HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail links between northern cities - drivers could soon see a shift in city centre parking.
The change also tallies with transport bosses' plans to freeze rush hour congestion despite a predicted rise in city centre commuters.
At a meeting held by travel watchdog Transport Focus, Simon Warburton, strategy director at Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM), was asked about how the current choice of cheap parking fits in with the vision to reduce car use and congestion in the city centre.
Mr Warburton accepted there was 'an awful lot' of temporary car parking in the centre, much of which had sprung up in the 2008 recession.
He said much of the land - like that around Piccadilly station - had been ready for development but then the 'cranes stopped moving'.
He said a lot of these 'peripheral car parks' would go from the city centre when developments like high speed rail and more developers moved into the high-value spaces.
He added: "In 20 years' time people will wonder why Manchester ever dedicated so much land around Piccadilly to car parking.
"It will not be a logical way to feed HS2 and Piccadilly in future as we develop transport capacity and there is a more integrated offer."
The 2040 Greater Manchester Transport Strategy outlines a future where there 110,000 more jobs than now are based in the city centre.
As a result, transport systems will need to be able to handle 68,000 more commuter trips in the morning peak.
But the report says: "In the city centre, our aim is to deliver the desired economic growth without any further growth in peak period car traffic levels.
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"We recognise that this is a major challenge, particularly as we estimate that we will need to accommodate around 68,000 additional commuter trips in the morning peak period by 2040.
"Our focus is on improving the quality and capacity of our public transport, walking and cycling networks to encourage as many people as possible to travel to the Regional Centre by these modes rather than by car.
"We must also ensure that our streets can cope with the huge increase in public transport passengers who will be walking or cycling from interchanges to their final destination."
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