By car, very. By anything else, not really. Roughly half the working population drives to work and more than four in ten never leave the house to do it. Almost nobody catches a train. Two-thirds of households keep more than one car, which is a fairly clear verdict on what the alternatives are worth.
Four stations sit within reach: Bristol Parkway, Filton Abbey Wood, Patchway and Pilning. Not one of them is in the village, and the commuting figures suggest residents have drawn the obvious conclusion. Fewer than 1% of working residents travel to work by train. Buses look better on a map, with 31 stops across the area, but only about 1% of commuters use one to get to work.
The commute mix tells the story more honestly than any list of infrastructure. Around 47% drive, and about 44% work from home, which between them account for the overwhelming majority of working residents. Walking takes about 2% and cycling about 1%. Only around 5% of households have no car at all, while roughly 65% run two or more. This is a village organised around the driveway, and it has been for some time.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times put the nearest town centre at about 15 minutes by car, 31 by public transport, 28 by bicycle and 75 minutes on foot. That last figure is worth sitting with. An hour and a quarter of walking is not a commute, it is a decision to spend your Saturday differently. These are modelled figures for the area rather than a route from any particular front door, and the public transport times date from 2019, so services may have changed since.
Broadband is the part that works. Gigabit service reaches about 71% of premises, superfast covers all of them, and nothing at all falls below the universal service obligation. For a village where 44% of people work from home, that is the single most load-bearing piece of infrastructure in the place.
Mobile coverage is effectively universal. Every premise has fourth or fifth generation service from at least one operator, and close to 100% have it from all of them.
For everyday journeys, the same modelled statistics put a doctor's surgery at about 12 minutes by car, 29 by public transport and 50 minutes on foot. A hospital is roughly 26 minutes by car and 88 by public transport, which is the sort of gap that decides whether you own a car or not. A food store is about 12 minutes by car and 45 on foot. Employment centres come out at around 14 minutes by car and 13 by public transport, the one journey where the bus genuinely competes. As above, the public transport times are the 2019 vintage and deserve more caution than the car and walking figures.
Bus stops are not the same as bus services, so the useful number is the current one: of the 31 stops, 23 have published service data, and those average around 127 scheduled weekday departures each, with about 6 at the peak hour. All 23 keep a weekend service. That is a real service rather than a token one, whatever the commuting figures say about how many people use it.
Road noise is the price of the location. Every postcode in the village sits near or above 65 decibels, the level at which official mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels and above. Major roads run close on more than one side. Rail noise, by contrast, registers at nothing.
Electric vehicle charging is thin. Three public charge points in the area, eight connectors between them, and two of those are rapid units. With two rapid connectors serving the whole village, charging is something you plan around rather than something you do while picking up milk.
Connectivity here is middling, and the split is stark: excellent broadband and easy driving on one side, negligible rail use and a walking time to the shops measured in three-quarters of an hour on the other. If your working life runs through a home office and a car, Almondsbury is well served. If it runs through a station platform, it is not.