Well enough on paper, and most residents have quietly opted out of using any of it. There's a railway station in the village. Hardly anyone takes it to work. Half the working population commutes from the spare room. Brookwood is connected; it just doesn't go out much.
Brookwood Rail Station sits in the village, with Woking Rail Station and Worplesdon Rail Station as the other stations in reach. For all that, only about 5% of working residents took the train to work in the 2021 Census. There are 13 bus stops in the area, and the share of residents commuting by bus rounds to 0%. The infrastructure is there. The ridership is at home in its slippers.
The commute mix explains why. About 48% of working residents worked from home in 2021, and about 36% drove. Walking accounted for about 6% and cycling about 2%. Car ownership matches the driving: about 49% of households have two or more cars, and only about 8% have none. The railway station is a selling point on the listing and a stranger to most of the people who bought on it.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics give the everyday distances. They're modelled for the area rather than timed from any front door, and the public transport figures date from 2019, when services may have been more generous than they are now. The nearest town centre is about 11 minutes by car, 16 by bike, 19 by public transport and 35 on foot. A GP is about 10 minutes by car, 18 by public transport and 26 minutes' walk. The nearest hospital is about 21 minutes by car and 52 by public transport, which is the number worth remembering on a bad night without a driver. A food store is about 9 minutes by car or 19 on foot. Getting to employment takes about 20 minutes by car and 15 by public transport, one of the few journeys where leaving the car at home wins.
The buses are more of a service than the commute figures suggest. The stops with timetable data average about 37 scheduled departures each on a weekday, around 3 an hour at peak, and 90% of stops see some weekend service. That's a working bus network. Residents mostly treat it as scenery.
Broadband is the connection Brookwood uses. Gigabit-capable broadband reaches about 85% of premises, ultrafast about 91%, and superfast covers all of them, with no premises below the legal minimum service level. For a village where half the workforce commutes as far as the kitchen, that matters more than the train timetable.
Mobile coverage is complete: 4G or 5G from at least one operator reaches every part of the area, and so does coverage from all operators. Any dropped call is your own fault.
In practice, a typical Brookwood working week is a few days at home on a good line and the odd trip by car. The station is there for the days in town. Anyone who expects to commute daily by public transport should time the actual journey from the actual house before buying, since the published times are modelled and partly out of date.
The price of the good connections is noise. Every postcode in the area sits near or above 65 decibels of road noise, the level at which official noise mapping treats it as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels. Rail is a separate source: about 49% of postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels from trains, with the loudest band at 70. None of this says how loud a particular bedroom will be, but it does say a viewing is worth doing at rush hour with the windows open.
Brookwood is middling for connections: the station, the buses and the broadband are all respectable, but the car still does most of the real work, and the roads and railway make themselves heard for it.