Mosa and Manchester Bikes Bring Community-Led Cycle Sharing to RHS Bridgewater

Mosa Innovations and Manchester Bikes have won funding from Active Travel England’s £1 million Innovation Fund to bring community-led cycle sharing to Royal Horticultural Society Bridgewater. The scheme will connect Walkden railway station to one of the largest gardens in Europe, giving visitors a car-free way to make the last mile of the journey. We have been working on this in confidence since March. With Active Travel England’s public announcement on 11 May 2026, we can finally talk about what it means. For Mosa, this is more than a single scheme. It is the first public demonstration of what community-led cycle sharing looks like when the operator is rooted in the community and the technology supports them, rather than dictating to them.

Mosa Innovations and Manchester Bikes have won funding from Active Travel England’s £1 million Innovation Fund

The Project: Walkden Station to RHS Bridgewater

Manchester Bikes has been awarded by Active Travel England to deliver a shared cycle scheme between Walkden railway station and RHS Bridgewater. The funding is part of ATE’s Innovation Fund, which has just awarded £1m across 12 projects in England.

The route fills a clear gap. RHS Bridgewater attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, and most of them arrive by car. Walkden station sits less than two miles from the gardens, but the last-mile connection has never been a strong option for people without their own bike. A shared cycle scheme between the two changes that.

Mosa is the technology partner. Manchester Bikes is the operator. The aim is straightforward: a car-free, inclusive route from public transport to a major visitor destination, run by people from the local cycling community.

Why Manchester Bikes Is the Right Partner

Manchester Bikes is rooted in the Manchester cycling community. The team has years of operational experience running cycle sharing schemes across the city, at different sizes and in different settings. They know what works at street level, which bays get used, which routes need a steadier hand, and what riders actually ask for.

That kind of local knowledge is what community-led cycle sharing depends on. A scheme is only as good as the people maintaining it, fixing punctures, watching bay occupancy, and answering rider questions. The further away those people are from the city they serve, the more the scheme starts to feel like a service imposed on a community rather than built by it.

Manchester Bikes, a staple in the local cycling scene, showcases its community-oriented store in the heart of the city, reflecting years of experience in managing bike-sharing initiatives.

Working with Manchester Bikes lets Mosa focus on what we are built to do. We provide the technology, the back-end systems, and the operational tools. Manchester Bikes brings the community presence, the operational experience, and the rider trust that comes from being a known name in the city.

Mosa is the technology partner in this project

What Community Bike Sharing Means

The dominant model in cycle sharing today is the operator-led model. A single company, often venture-backed, runs the entire stack: bikes, technology, operations, customer support, and policy negotiations. The model can deliver scale quickly. It can also deliver fare shocks, sudden withdrawals, and fragility when the capital cycle turns.

Community Bike Sharing sharing is a different shape. The scheme is owned and operated by people who are already part of the community it serves. A local cycle shop. A community interest company. A transport-focused charity. The technology is provided by Mosa, but the relationship with riders, councils, and partners belongs to the operator.

Community-led cycle sharing is a different shape. The scheme is owned and operated by people who are already part of the community it serves

The economics work because the operator does not have to pay back venture capital. The trust works because the operator is already there. And the resilience works because nobody is one investor decision away from shutting the scheme down.

In its own announcement of the Innovation Fund, the Local Transport Minister, Lilian Greenwood, said the government is “backing bold, community led ideas that get more people walking, wheeling and cycling.” That language matters. The case for community-led is no longer only a Mosa argument. It is now part of how the government talks about active travel.

Why RHS Bridgewater Is the Right Site

RHS Bridgewater opened in 2021 and is one of the largest gardens in Europe. It sits in Salford, in a part of Greater Manchester where the cycle sharing operators of the last decade have rarely invested. Visitor sites like Bridgewater tend to fall outside the urban density that operator-led models need to make their economics work.

That gap is exactly what community-led cycle sharing is good at filling. A scheme can be sized to the actual demand of a recreation site. It can serve a station-to-garden link that operator-led schemes would not bid for. It can flex with seasonality without a head office on the other side of the world weighing in.

 A scheme can be sized to the actual demand of a recreation site.

If the model works at Bridgewater, the case for replicating it at other recreation sites becomes easier to make. National Trust properties. Heritage railways. Country parks. Greenways with stations at their ends. There are hundreds of these sites in the UK that would benefit from a last-mile cycle scheme, and almost none of them are top of the list for a venture-backed operator.

What Comes Next

The Bridgewater scheme is the start, not the destination. Mosa is building the technology layer that lets more local cycle shops, community interest companies, and transport charities run their own schemes. Manchester Bikes is our first public partner. We hope it will not be the last.

If you run a local cycle business, a community interest company, or a community organisation that has been wondering whether you could run a cycle sharing scheme in your own area, talk to us. The model is designed to be replicable. The funding routes are beginning to open up. And the case for community-led is now being made by the government as well as by us.

RHS Bridgewater is a milestone for Mosa, for Manchester Bikes, and for the wider case that cycle sharing does not have to be a venture-backed bet to be scalable. It can be community-led, financially honest, and built to last. We will share more as the scheme moves from announcement to ride-ready. For now, we want to thank Active Travel England, the team at RHS Bridgewater, and most of all Manchester Bikes for the partnership that got us here.