Well by bus and broadband, and modestly by train. Nearly half of working residents worked from home at the last count. Buses come about 13 an hour at peak. Fewer than one worker in ten took the train. The station gave Belmont its name, and these days the broadband connection does more of the commuting.
Belmont Rail Station is on the branch line between Sutton and Epsom Downs, with Sutton (London) Rail Station one stop up the line and Banstead Rail Station also nearby. At the 2021 Census only about 8% of Belmont's working residents went to work by train. The area has 96 bus stops, and about 5% of workers used a bus to get to work. Belmont took its name from its station, and fewer than one worker in ten now uses it to get to work.
How Belmont actually gets to work is mostly not at all. The 2021 Census found about 44% of working residents working from home, about 29% driving, about 6% walking and about 1% cycling. About 24% of households have no car, and about 30% have two or more. The car-free quarter and the two-car third live in the same suburb, and both seem to manage.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey-time statistics put the nearest town centre about 9 minutes away by car, 15 by public transport, 11 by bike and 17 on foot. A 17-minute walk to the shops and back is a decent outing, and most residents with a car will drive it anyway.
Broadband is strong. Gigabit-capable connections are available to about 86% of premises in Belmont, ultrafast to about 88% and superfast to about 99%. Mobile coverage is complete, with 4G or 5G from at least one operator and from all operators at 100% of the area.
Belmont has 23 public electric-vehicle charge points with 33 connectors between them, and 2 of those are rapid units. With just two rapid units, most electric-car owners here will be charging at home overnight.
The same Department for Transport statistics put a GP about 8 minutes away by car, 16 on foot and 14 by public transport, and a hospital about 16 minutes by car and 30 by public transport. A food store is about 10 minutes' walk or 7 by car, and the nearest large employment centre about 4 minutes by car or 11 by public transport. These are modelled area averages from 2019. The driving and walking distances will not have changed, but the public transport times were calculated before several years of bus timetable changes, so they are the least dependable of the set. The hospital is the only one of these destinations a non-driver needs to plan around.
The buses running today hold up better than any modelled figure. Belmont's stops average about 226 scheduled departures each on a weekday and about 13 an hour at peak, and 100% of them have a weekend service. Those are counts of buses leaving the stop, and that frequency means nobody needs to memorise the timetable.
Road noise reaches almost every corner. The national noise mapping puts nearly 100% of Belmont's postcodes near or above 65 decibels from road traffic, the level at which official mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate source: about 16% of postcodes are near or above the same 65-decibel mark from trains, with nothing louder than 65 decibels. The mapping is drawn at postcode level and cannot say what a particular bedroom will hear, so visit at rush hour and listen from the room at the front.
For most residents, getting about means a laptop most days, a bus or a car on the others, and a train for the occasional trip that needs one. Belmont is better connected than average, mainly because of the buses and broadband, while the railway line it is named after does a smaller share of the work.