Greater Manchester’s transport system looks very different depending on the observer’s vantage point. From the other side of the Pennines, the picture looks rosy. Business leaders in Leeds and Sheffield can only envy Manchester’s airport, the UK’s busiest outside south-east England, its three fast trains an hour to London and its growing tram network.

From within Manchester, however, the view is obscured by the failure in a referendum last year of a series of transport reforms that were intended to reduce congestion and raise funds for substantial further improvements.