Bordon is well connected by broadband and poorly connected by rail. Six in ten drive to work. A quarter don't commute at all. Almost nobody takes the train. The fibre in Bordon does more commuting than the railway.
There is no station in Bordon. The nearest is Liphook Rail Station, and the 2021 Census found half of one percent of working residents commuting by train, which is about what you'd expect when the platform is in another town. Buses do better than their reputation, with 39 stops in the area, though only about 1% of residents use them to get to work.
Driving is how most people get to work, at about 61%. Working from home comes second at about 24%, walking at about 6%, and cycling hardly registers at about 1%. Car ownership follows. Only about 10% of households have no car, and about 55% have two or more. Anyone planning to live here car-free should know that nine in ten neighbours decided against it.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics, modelled for the area in 2019 rather than for any particular front door, put the nearest town centre about 22 minutes away by car and 32 by public transport. By bike it's about 51 minutes. On foot it's about two hours, which tells you walking into town isn't an option.
Everyday errands are closer. A GP is about 7 minutes by car, 9 by public transport or 11 on foot. A food shop is about 6 minutes' walk or 7 by car, so the milk run needs no planning. A major employment centre is about 26 minutes by car and 33 by public transport. A hospital is the outlier: about 38 minutes by car and about an hour and a half by public transport. The public transport times date from 2019 and services have been cut in many places since, so trust the car and walking times more.
The buses themselves run more often than a rural town's usually do. Across the 33 stops with timetable data, each averages about 110 scheduled departures on a weekday, with three to four buses an hour at peak. Every one of those stops also has a weekend service. That is a working bus network, not a timetable that exists mainly to be pinned up in a shelter.
Home workers are well looked after. Gigabit broadband is available to about 78% of premises, ultrafast to about 82% and superfast to about 99%. No premises fall below the universal service minimum. Mobile coverage is equally solid: 100% of the area gets 4G or 5G from at least one operator, and about 99% from all of them.
Road noise is the price of being a driving town. About 99% of postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. That is an area-wide figure, not a prediction for any one house, so listen from the back garden at rush hour before you buy. Rail noise registers at none of the postcodes, since there is no railway to make any.
Electric car owners have four public charge points to share, with ten connectors between them. None are rapid chargers, so charging here is something you plan and leave overnight, not something you top up while buying a sandwich.
For a typical commute, this all adds up to a car journey of around 20 to 30 minutes to the nearest town centre or employment centre, or working from home and letting the fibre handle the travelling.
Bordon's connections are middling. The broadband and buses are good, and the rail link is where it falls down.