Amersham is well connected on paper, and most residents hardly use the connections. It has its own station at the far end of an Underground line. More than half the workforce works from home. Almost nobody takes the bus. Nearly half of households run two or more cars.
Amersham Rail Station is a terminus of the Metropolitan line, and main-line trains towards London share the track, with Chalfont & Latimer Rail Station the next stop down the line. At the 2021 census, about 2% of working residents went to work by train and about 1% by bus, even though the town has 99 bus stops. The Underground came all this way out to Amersham, and about one commuter in fifty uses it to get to work.
The way people actually get to work is mostly working from home or driving. In the 2021 census about 54% of working residents worked from home, about 31% drove, about 6% walked and about 1% cycled. The census was taken in 2021, while many people were still working from home, so the home-working share is a snapshot of that year. Car ownership points the same way: about 47% of households have two or more cars, and about 11% have none. Most households here own two cars and keep the season ticket for occasional use.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics are modelled averages for the area, and the public transport times in them date from 2019, so services cut since then will make some of those times longer today. On that basis the nearest town centre is about 9 minutes away by car, 12 by bike, 16 by public transport and 21 on foot. A GP is about 8 minutes by car, 15 by public transport and 18 on foot, and a food shop about 7 minutes by car or 12 on foot. Getting to a cluster of jobs takes about 10 minutes by car and 21 by public transport. A hospital is about 28 minutes by car and 52 by public transport, the one everyday journey where not having a car really costs time.
Buses run more often than the commuting figures suggest. Of the 65 stops with timetable records, the average sees about 44 scheduled departures on a weekday and about 3 in the peak hour, and about 99% have some service at weekends. Those are current timetable figures. The service is there, and hardly anyone in the 2021 census was using it to get to work.
Broadband is strong. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 79% of premises, superfast about 99%, and no premises fall below the legal minimum broadband speed. Every postcode gets at least one mobile network for 4G or 5G, and about 98% get all of them. For a town where most of the working population works from home, that matters more than the train.
Road noise is widespread. Official noise mapping treats 65 decibels as the point where road noise becomes significant, and over 99% of Amersham's postcodes are at or near that level, with the loudest band reaching 75 decibels. No postcodes are near the threshold for rail noise. Main roads meet at Amersham, and the government's strategic noise maps show which side of a house faces the loud stretch, so check a specific address there.
There are 16 public charge points in the area with 28 connectors between them, and 5 of those are rapid units. With only 5 rapid units, most electric-car owners will be charging at home.
Amersham is middling for connections. The rail link is good, the broadband is better, and both are used less than the car and the home office.