Cars are the entire reason Manchester is a shithole.

Cars only support low density housing due to their space inefficiency and create a constituency with a strong incentive to protect unearned subsidies (free or below market parking, free use of road capacity, pollution, etc.). This drives up home prices, locks people into the most expensive transit mode, creates social issues like homelessness, and blocks most attempts to address any of it.

Manchester needs a dramatic reduction in parking and road space for cars to make other modes of travel safe and effective. Walking, cycling, and personal electric vehicles like scooters are the obvious best-in-class options in a city that lacks the population to support real public transit, but they're severely underused because cars are given priority on literally all roads, making them hostile places for anything else.