Braintree is well connected by car and by broadband, and only modestly by rail. More than half of its workers drive to work. Hardly anyone takes the train, even though the town has two stations. Almost every home can get gigabit broadband. In practice Braintree is a road town with a very good internet connection.
Braintree has two stations, Braintree and Braintree Freeport, both on a single branch line, and Cressing and White Notley stations are further down it. At the 2021 census about 2% of Braintree's workers took the train to work, and about 2% took the bus, even though there are 221 bus stops in and around the town. The other branch line, west towards Bishop's Stortford, closed to passengers in 1952, and the one left serves only a small share of the town's commuters.
The census shows how Braintree actually got to work in 2021: about 56% drove, 23% worked from home, 10% walked and 2% cycled. About 17% of households had no car and 42% had two or more. The Romans built two roads and the town grew up where they met, and two thousand years later most of Braintree still travels by road.
Getting to a town centre is quick by car and slower without one. The Department for Transport's modelled journey times for the area, which date from 2019, put the nearest town centre about 9 minutes away by car, 13 by bike, 16 by public transport and 22 on foot. A GP is about 8 minutes by car, 13 by public transport and 18 on foot, and a food shop is about 7 minutes whether you walk or drive. A hospital is about 25 minutes by car and 49 by public transport. A place of work is about 15 minutes by car and 24 by public transport. These are averages across the area, so one house can be well above or below them. The car and walking times hold up because roads and distances stay put. The public transport times are older and more fragile, since bus services have changed since 2019. Anyone relying on the bus should expect that 49-minute hospital trip to take longer, not less.
The buses run more often than the commuting figures suggest. Stops in Braintree average about 92 scheduled departures each on a weekday and about five an hour at peak, and 88% of stops have some weekend service. These are current timetables, unlike the 2019 journey times. Braintree has a reasonable bus service that hardly anyone uses to get to work.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 96% of premises in Braintree, and superfast reaches all of them, with none falling below the legal minimum speed. Every postcode has 4G or 5G from at least one network, and about 99% have it from all of them. Broadband and mobile signal are the best-connected part of the town.
About 74% of Braintree's postcodes are at or near the 65-decibel level at which official mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise does not reach that level for any postcode here. Most of the town is close enough to a busy road to hear it. The government's road-noise map shows which band a given address falls in, and that is worth checking before choosing a house on a main road.
Braintree has 7 public charging points for electric cars, with 15 connectors between them, and 3 of those are rapid. With three rapid connectors in a town of this size, most electric-car owners will need a charger at home.
Braintree is fairly well connected for a buyer who drives or works online, and weaker for one who needs a train every morning.