Camberley is well connected by road and broadband, and poorly connected by train. The station exists. Hardly anyone commutes on it. Four in ten work from home instead. The town runs on cars and fibre, and it has made its peace with that.
Camberley station is in the middle of town, on a branch line through Bagshot and Frimley, with only a few peak trains running through to London Waterloo. Blackwater station, on the Yorktown side, runs on a different line towards Reading and Guildford. For faster London trains, plenty of residents drive out to Farnborough (Main), Brookwood or Sunningdale. At the 2021 census, about 2% of workers commuted by train and another 2% by bus, even though the area has 164 bus stops. The rail network is a feature people point to on the map and then drive past.
The commute tells the real story. About 44% of workers drove and about 41% worked from home. Walking made up about 7%, and cycling about 1%. About 12% of households have no car, while about 53% have two or more. In practice, a household here needs either a second car or a good home-office chair, and most have one or the other.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics are modelled for the area rather than timed from any particular front door. They put the nearest town centre about 11 minutes away by car, 16 by bike, 19 by public transport and 31 on foot. Half an hour's walk to the centre means that for many homes it isn't really walking distance.
Broadband is the strong point. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 86% of premises and superfast about 99%, with almost nobody below the legal minimum. That's what makes the home-working share possible. Mobile coverage is complete, with about 100% of the area getting 4G or 5G from at least one operator and about 100% from all of them.
Everyday destinations are close by car. The same statistics put a GP about 9 minutes' drive away, 16 minutes by public transport and 22 minutes on foot. A hospital is about 13 minutes by car and 25 by public transport. A food shop is about 7 minutes by car or 11 on foot. Employment centres are about 24 minutes by car and, oddly, 12 by public transport, because a modelled bus to the nearest one beats sitting in traffic to a more distant one. The public-transport times date from 2019, and services have been cut since in plenty of places, so they deserve more scepticism than the car and walking times.
The buses themselves run more often than the commuting figures suggest. On a weekday, the average stop sees about 120 scheduled departures, about 7 in the peak hour, and 96% of stops have some weekend service. That's a working bus network. The town just prefers its cars.
Road noise is everywhere. Virtually every postcode, rounding to 100%, sits near or above 65 decibels on the official road-noise mapping, the level at which road noise is treated as significant, and the loudest band present is 75 decibels or more. That describes how close homes are to mapped road noise, not how loud a particular bedroom will be, so visit at rush hour before you buy. Rail noise hardly registers, with no postcodes near the threshold.
Charging an electric car still takes some planning. The area has 8 public charge points with 13 connectors between them, and only 1 of them is a rapid charger. With one rapid unit, charging is something you schedule rather than something you do during the weekly shop.
Camberley is better connected than average for anyone who drives or works from home, and noticeably worse for anyone who wanted the train to do the work.