One clear winner emerges from Andrew Adonis’s report into improving northern transport infrastructure – and once again it is Manchester.

The city of the Smiths and Old Trafford has already been given preferential treatment by George Osborne, to the chagrin of its northern rivals. The chancellor not only signed his first devolution deal with the wider Greater Manchester region in November 2014, but he has continued to shower the city with goodies, notably the £110m arts centre, the Factory, to be built on the former Granada Studios site.

Last year, Osborne managed to persuade the Chinese president, Xi Jingping, to visit just one city outside of London. Where did he go? Manchester, of course.

Lord Adonis’s report is split into two sections: rail and road. He makes five key recommendations, all of which will directly benefit Manchester. They are:

Kickstart HS3 to cut journey times between Leeds and Manchester by 40% to 30 minutes.

Harness HS2 to improve intercity connections in the north, including Manchester to Liverpool (which has been omitted from HS2 plans).

Redevelop Manchester Piccadilly station.

Increase the capacity on the M62 by up to 33% from Liverpool to Leeds (which passes through, you guessed it, Manchester).

Enhance the M56 access from Liverpool to Manchester airport.

As north of England editor, I live in Manchester, where the Guardian began in 1821. But several times a week I have to try to reach other areas of the north via the region’s congested roads and woefully inadequate railway.

I cycled into the office on Deansgate on Tuesday morning, glad I wasn’t trying to catch a train: by 7.15am the reliably appalling Northern Rail had managed to cancel nine services because of train faults and a shortage of carriages. I was happy, too, not to have had to drive to Leeds: roadworks on the M62 eastbound overran, closing two lanes near Huddersfield.

So I agree wholeheartedly that change cannot come soon enough. But in making Manchester the main beneficiary, Adonis seems to be siding with Osborne by concentrating efforts on only one city at the expense of the rest.

I was in Teesside last week talking to people about the budget and Osborne’s divisive plans to build a “northern powerhouse”. Many people felt wholly and understandably left out: forget trying to reach Manchester or even London; in Middlesbrough people would just like it not to take an hour and 20 minutes to take a train 40 miles north to Newcastle.

It takes longer to get from Liverpool to Hull by train than to travel twice the distance from London to Paris. On the roads, travelling east to west is often a nightmare. The report points out that there are fewer traffic lanes on the 14 A roads crossing the Pennines between Sheffield and Scotland than there are on A roads crossing the Thames between Tower Bridge and Chelsea.

The report justifies prioritising the Manchester to Leeds link because their city regions account for 46% of the population of what it called the “northern powerhouse”. As Adonis points out, the two cities are less than 40 miles apart, and yet on the congested M62 it often takes more than two hours by car to travel from one to the other.

As for pumping money into Manchester Piccadilly, that station is already earmarked for major investment as part of the so-called “northern hub”. It is not even the north of England’s busiest station. That’s Leeds, where passenger numbers increased by 31% between 2009-10 and 2014-15, with about 29m entries and exits in 2014-15, compared with close to 25m at Piccadillyover the same time.

Rail travellers in Sheffield would be justified in shooting Adonis a dirty look. Transport for the North, the soon-to-be statutory body set up to improve northern connectivity, reported in November that it was entirely feasible to build a new rail tunnel under the Peak District to speed up the slow Manchester to Sheffield service.

But Adonis makes no mention of this, mooting instead a road-only tunnel to bypass the often snow-covered Woodhead and Snake passes between the two cities. Surely any plan should be encouraging people to get out of their cars rather than into them?

Ultimately, though, Adonis can only make recommendations. It’s up to Osborne to fund them into reality.