From Walkden Station to RHS Bridgewater
Community-led cycle sharing in practice. A pilot that proves a leisure destination in a suburban setting can give people a car-free way to arrive.
In May 2026, Active Travel England awarded its Innovation Fund to a small consortium with a specific brief. Build a shared cycle scheme that connects Walkden railway station to RHS Garden Bridgewater, and prove that a leisure destination in a suburban setting can give people a car-free way to arrive. Mosa provides the technology. Manchester Bikes runs the scheme. The Royal Horticultural Society hosts it. CoMoUK evaluates it. This page is for everyone we are going to need to talk to next.
The problem
RHS Bridgewater is one of the largest gardens in Europe and has welcomed more than two million visits since it opened in 2021. The overwhelming majority of those visitors arrive by car.
2M+
Visits since the garden opened in 2021
2.5 mi
From Walkden, the nearest rail station
30%
Entry discount already offered to car-free visitors
Walkden station is the nearest mainline rail link, and there is no useful regular bus connection from there to the garden. RHS already offers a 30% entry discount for visitors who arrive car-free. RHS clearly wants car-free visits. What is missing is a practical way to cover that last leg.
The problem is not motivation. It is a missing last mile.
The model
Operator
Manchester Bikes
Has been running cycle operations and shared-bike programmes in Manchester since 2014. Handles the fleet, the maintenance, the rebalancing, and the day-to-day rider experience.
Technology partner
Mosa Innovations
Provides the modular, retrofittable smart docks, the management platform, and the rider app. Hardware is Sold Secure Diamond rated.
Host partner
RHS Bridgewater
RHS staff and volunteers will be trained as Active Travel Champions to support first-time riders at the garden and the station.
Independent evaluator
CoMoUK
The national shared-transport charity. Designs and runs the evaluation framework, validates the data, and reports to ATE standards.
This is what we mean by "community-led." It is not a slogan. It is a partnership shape.
The dominant model in UK cycle sharing is operator-led. A single, often venture-backed, company runs the whole stack. The model scales fast and is fragile when capital cycles turn.
Community-led cycle sharing is a different shape. The operator is already part of the place the scheme serves. A local cycle business, a community interest company, a transport-focused charity. The technology is provided by Mosa. The rider relationship belongs to the operator.
At Bridgewater, the four roles look like this:
The pilot runs from June to October 2026, across the busiest five months of the garden's visitor calendar.
What we are piloting
Route
Walkden Station to RHS Bridgewater. 2.5 miles, 10 to 12 minutes by bike.
Fleet
25 smart docks, 15 shared bikes, including a cargo bike and an adaptive cycle.
Evaluation, run by CoMoUK, covers usage, modal shift, inclusion, and safety perception. The final deliverable is a published case study and a Visitor Destination Active Travel Guidebook. We want other people to be able to copy this.
Why this can travel
RHS operates five gardens with around three million visits a year. If the Bridgewater model is replicated across the network at a 3 to 5% shift to active travel, that is roughly 100,000 car trips and 70 to 100 tonnes of CO₂e avoided per year. That is one institution.
The wider pattern is bigger. National Trust properties, English Heritage sites, Royal Parks, country parks, heritage railways, greenways that end at stations. Hundreds of UK destinations sit outside the geography that operator-led cycle sharing finds commercially viable. Almost all of them have a last-mile problem.
"Backing bold, community led ideas that get more people walking, wheeling and cycling."
Lilian Greenwood, Local Transport Minister, in the ATE Innovation Fund announcement, 11 May 2026
The argument for community-led is no longer only ours. Bridgewater is one of those ideas in flight.
Two ways to be part of
what comes next
Run a scheme like this
If you are a local cycle shop, a community interest company, a transport-focused charity, or a small operator with the trust of your community already built, we want to talk.
You bring the rider relationship, the operational presence, the local knowledge. We provide the technology, the platform, the data infrastructure, and the operating playbook from Bridgewater. Funding routes are opening up. We can help you find them.
Host a scheme like this
If you run a visitor destination, a heritage site, a garden, a country park, a museum, a station, or a council with a similar last-mile gap, we want to talk.
You bring the site, the visitor data, and the willingness to host. We bring the operator network we are building and the technology that makes a small scheme viable. The Bridgewater Visitor Destination Active Travel Guidebook will be public from late 2026.
Funded by
Active Travel England Innovation Fund
Delivered by
Mosa Innovations · Manchester Bikes · RHS Bridgewater · CoMoUK
