Bexley is well connected, and most of the connecting happens down a fibre line. Nine in ten homes can get gigabit broadband. Every mobile network reaches everywhere. The biggest single commute in Bexley ends at the router. For the days that need an office, the village still has a station of its own and buses that turn up often enough to forget the timetable.
Bexley Rail Station is the village's own, with trains towards London Charing Cross via Sidcup and the other way out to Gravesend, and Albany Park, Bexleyheath and Crayford stations are within the wider patch. At the 2021 census about 9% of working residents took the train to work. Buses are thicker on the ground than their use suggests. The area has 186 bus stops, and only about 3% of workers rode a bus to the job.
The real commute figures belong to the laptop and the car. At the 2021 census about 42% of working residents worked from home and 37% drove, which left walking at about 3% and cycling under 1%. Cars are part of the furniture, with about 44% of households running two or more and about 13% having none. The station gets the attention and the drive gets the traffic.
On the Department for Transport's modelled journey times for the area, the nearest town centre is about 9 minutes away by car, 12 by bike, 16 by public transport and 20 on foot. Everyday errands are close. A food shop is about 9 minutes' walk or 7 by car, and a GP about 14 minutes on foot, 8 by car and 12 by public transport. The nearest employment centre is about 16 minutes by car and 14 by public transport. The hospital is the outlier, at about 19 minutes by car and 45 by public transport. These are 2019 modelled averages: the distances will not have moved, but the public transport times are the ones most likely to have aged, since services have changed since. Anyone without a car will find a hospital appointment takes the whole morning.
The buses themselves are busy enough to rely on. Across the stops with timetable data, the average stop sees about 173 scheduled departures on a weekday and about 12 an hour at the peak, and 95% of stops have some weekend service. For a village that likes to think of itself as apart from London, it has kept the London habit of a bus that is never long in coming.
Broadband is where Bexley does best. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 90% of premises and superfast about 99%, and both 4G and 5G cover every postcode on every network. A buyer whose job lives on video calls will struggle to find a street here that lets them down.
The traffic noise is closer than the village atmosphere suggests. Official noise mapping treats 65 decibels as the point where road noise becomes significant, and over 99% of Bexley's postcodes are near or above that level somewhere on their roads, with the loudest band reaching 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate source, and about 16% of postcodes are near 65 decibels from the railway, peaking at 70. The government's noise maps show the bands road by road, so look up the exact address and the side of the house the bedrooms face. In the conservation streets, the sash windows the planners protect are the same ones letting the road in.
Charging an electric car takes a little planning. The area has 11 public charge points with 19 connectors between them, and 4 of those are rapid. Most owners will be charging on the drive, which in Bexley there usually is.
For a commuter, Bexley offers trains towards the City from its own platform, a dense bus network and a short drive to most errands, with broadband that makes the commute optional. It is one of Bexley's real strengths, held back mainly by the hospital trip and the noise from the roads it is connected by.