Very well, and connections are most of the reason people move to Barking. One station gives you the Underground, the Overground and mainline trains. Buses stop at every stop, every day of the week. Four in ten households don't own a car and mostly don't need one. The town is wired to match.
Barking Rail Station is the hub, with Underground and Overground lines and mainline services all calling there, and Ilford and Dagenham Dock are the next stations along. Even so, the 2021 Census found only about 11% of working residents taking the train to work, with 9% on the bus. The 247 bus stops in the area account for that second group, and there are a lot of them for a town this size.
The biggest single group in that 2021 count, about 27%, drove to work, and about 24% worked from home. Walking accounted for about 5% and cycling about 1%. About 40% of households have no car, and about 17% have two or more. Barking has a station most London suburbs would envy, and a quarter of its commuters still drive past it.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times put the nearest town centre about 9 minutes away by car, 15 by public transport, 11 by bike and 20 on foot. For everyday errands, the same statistics have a GP about 7 minutes by car and 8 on foot, a food shop about 7 minutes either walking or driving, and a centre of employment about 8 minutes by car or 10 by public transport. The hospital is the outlier, at about 16 minutes by car but around 37 by public transport and over an hour on foot. These are averages modelled for the whole area, and while the distances don't move, the public transport times date from 2019 and are the least reliable of the set now that some services have been cut since. Anyone without a car should allow most of a morning for an outpatient appointment.
The buses are current and they are frequent. Across the 217 stops with timetable data, the average stop has 503 scheduled departures each weekday and about 28 buses in the busiest hour, and every one of those stops has a weekend service. That is a service you can turn up for without checking.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 93% of the area and superfast about 98%, and no measured postcode falls below the legal minimum for a decent connection. Every postcode gets an indoor 4G or 5G signal from every network. The quarter of residents who work from home are doing it on some of the best infrastructure in outer London.
There are 19 public charging points in the area with 48 connectors between them, 6 of them rapid. Six rapid units is enough for a top-up while you shop and not enough to depend on as your only way to charge.
The cost of all these connections is that you can hear them. About 77% of postcodes are near or above 65 decibels of road noise, the level at which official noise mapping treats traffic as significant, and the loudest band in Barking reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate source, and about 61% of postcodes are near or above the same threshold from trains, peaking at 70 decibels. Check the government's road and rail noise maps for the exact property while you are deciding whether to offer, and visit at rush hour as well as at the weekend.
For a typical commute, the sums are simple. Walk or bus to the station, then take whichever line suits the destination, with no car needed. Driving is still quicker for local trips and much quicker for the hospital.
Transport is the thing Barking does best. For anyone who needs to get into London and back without a car, few towns at this price come close, as long as you can sleep through the trains.