Manchester is a city which could do so much better. Poor infrastructure, poor vision by TfGM, poor enforcement by GMP. Given the wide main roads leading to the city centre (A665, A56, A62 to name a couple) there is so much space to add good quality infrastructure if only the council and transport authority had the guts to prioritise people over cars. Unfortunately, nobody in the position to make such a change has the spine they were born with, so rather than the revolution we need, we get useless tinkering around the edges.
Don't get me wrong, there are some nice cycle routes. You could certainly do worse than using the Fallowfield Loop to get from Droylsden to Chorlton, even if it is a bit of a barrier-fest. It's just unfortunate that we're then given things like door-zone cycle lanes next to tram lines on Ashton New Road, or have a key cross-city cycle route removed as part of the work done at St Peters Square. They also don't seem to understand you won't get more people cycling by having fancy places to park their bike if they don't feel safe on the roads. That or they just want cyclists off the roads, hence the abundance of tow-path routes in the Velocity 2025 plans.