Better by cable than by carriage. Hardly anyone commutes by train. Three in ten work from home. Half drive. The quickest way out of Broadstairs most weekdays is a video call.
The rail is there if you want it. Broadstairs Rail Station and Dumpton Park Rail Station both sit inside the town, with Ramsgate, Margate and Thanet Parkway close by. Since 2009 a high-speed service has run from London St Pancras through Ashford International and on to Broadstairs, and the station is one of the odd ones where London trains can leave in either direction. For all that, only about 2% of working residents at the 2021 Census commuted by train, and about 2% by bus, despite 299 bus stops across the town. The infrastructure is well ahead of the demand.
How Broadstairs actually gets to work is by staying put or by car. About 29% of workers were based at home in 2021, and about 50% drove. Walking accounted for about 9%, and cycling about 2%. Car ownership follows: about 20% of households have no car, while about 36% have two or more. In a town where a fifth manage without one and a third run a fleet, the driveway count tells you more about a street than the bus timetable.
Everyday trips are short, whatever the mode. The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics, modelled for the area in 2019 and not a route from any particular door, put the nearest town centre about 8 minutes away by car, 14 by public transport, 12 by bike and 21 on foot. A GP is about 8 minutes by car, 12 by public transport and 14 on foot. A food store is about 7 minutes by car or 9 walking. The nearest hospital is about 11 minutes by car but about 30 by public transport. Employment centres sit about 10 minutes away by car and 41 by public transport. Those public transport times date from 2019 and services have been cut in places since, so read them more cautiously than the car and walking figures. The 41-minute bus trip to work against a 10-minute drive is the whole reason half the town drives.
The buses themselves are busier than their passenger share implies. Stops across Broadstairs average 78 scheduled departures on a weekday, about 4 an hour at peak, and about 94% of stops have some weekend service. That's a working network, not a token one, carrying fewer commuters than it could.
Broadband does the commuting for the rest. Gigabit-capable broadband reaches about 83% of premises and superfast about 99%, with no premises recorded below the legal minimum service. That's what makes the work-from-home share possible and why the house with the office in the box room is the one that sells. Mobile coverage is equally unremarkable, in the good sense: about 100% of postcodes have 4G or 5G from at least one operator and about 100% from all of them.
Traffic and trains have a sound as well as a timetable. About 55% of postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels of road noise, 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 53% of postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels from the railway, with the loudest band at 70. None of this predicts how a given bedroom will sound, but a house backing onto the line or a main road deserves a second viewing at rush hour.
Charging an electric car takes a bit of planning. The area has 10 public charge points with 31 connectors between them, 6 of them rapid. Six rapid units means charging here is something you schedule, not something you do while the shopping goes in the boot.
Broadstairs is better connected than its commuting habits suggest: the rails, buses and fibre all work, and the town mostly uses the fibre.