Binfield is well connected as long as you have a car or a broadband router. Half the workers stay home. Most of the rest drive. The train barely registers. Public transport is there, and hardly anyone here uses it.
There's no station in Binfield itself. The nearest ones in the register are Bracknell, Martins Heron, Wokingham and Twyford, and at the 2021 census about 1% of workers commuted by train. Buses carry about the same share, roughly 1%, even though the area has 43 bus stops. Four stations nearby and a stop within reach of most streets, and the residents still leave both to other people.
The census commute explains it. About 50% of workers were working from home, and about 41% drove. Walking accounted for about 3% and cycling about 1%. Only about 6% of households have no car, while about 61% have two or more. The 2021 census was taken while the pandemic was still affecting how people worked, so the home-working share may have moved since. The driving share hasn't needed a pandemic to hold up.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics give modelled times for the area as a whole, not a route from any particular front door. They put the nearest town centre about 12 minutes away by car and about 21 minutes by public transport. By bike it's about 18 minutes. On foot it's about 38 minutes, which is further than most people will walk for a pint of milk and a prescription.
Broadband is where Binfield has nothing to apologise for. Gigabit-capable broadband reaches about 96% of premises and superfast reaches all of them. No premises fall below the universal service obligation, the legal minimum for a usable connection. For the half of the workforce working from home, that matters more than any train times.
Mobile coverage is complete. Indoor and outdoor 4G or 5G reaches 100% of the area from at least one operator, and 100% from all of them.
In practice, a typical commute from Binfield starts on the drive. Rail commuters drive or catch a bus to one of the nearby stations. Everyone else either drives the whole way or doesn't commute at all.
The same Department for Transport statistics cover everyday trips, and the car wins every time. A GP is about nine minutes by car, about 22 minutes on foot and about 17 by public transport. A hospital is about 20 minutes by car and about 52 by public transport. A food store is about 12 minutes' walk or seven minutes by car. The nearest employment centre is about 13 minutes by car and about eight by public transport, the only destination where the bus comes out ahead. The public transport times were modelled in 2019 and services may have been cut since, so trust them less than the car and walking times. Nearly an hour to reach a hospital by bus is not a journey anyone wants to make with a broken wrist.
The buses do run. Across the 38 stops with service data, each averages about 31 scheduled departures on a weekday, and every one of them has some weekend service. At peak time, though, each stop averages fewer than two buses an hour. That's a real service, but for most people a backup to the car rather than a way to commute.
Road noise is the other side of all this driving. Official noise mapping treats 65 decibels as the point where road noise becomes significant, and every Binfield postcode sits near a mapped area at or above that level. The loudest band present reaches 75 decibels. That tells you busy roads run close to the whole area. It doesn't tell you how loud any particular bedroom will be, so visit at rush hour. No postcode sits near significant rail noise.
Binfield's connections are middling. Broadband and mobile coverage are excellent, but the roads carry nearly everyone and the trains and buses carry hardly anyone.