Chessington is well connected if you drive, and decent if you don't. It has two stations, and few of its commuters use them. Buses run often, weekends included. Broadband reaches nearly everyone. The road is the main transport link here, and nearly every street is close enough to hear it.
Chessington North and Chessington South both have direct trains to London Waterloo, and South is the end of the line, which was meant to continue to Leatherhead until the Green Belt stopped it in the late 1930s. At the 2021 census about 5% of working residents went to work by train and about 6% by bus, the bus from 84 stops spread across the area. The railway has two stops in Chessington and runs mostly empty from both.
Driving is how Chessington gets to work. About 42% of working residents drove at the census, and about 33% worked from home. Walking accounted for about 6% and cycling 2%. About 39% of households run two or more cars, while only about 16% have none. A town built between the wars around a railway now runs on its drives.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times put the nearest town centre about 14 minutes away by car, 21 by public transport, 17 by bike and 37 on foot. Those are averages for the area, and the public transport time dates from 2019, the most likely of the four to have changed since. A 37-minute walk is a commitment, which is why the walk mostly doesn't happen.
The same modelling puts a GP about 8 minutes away by car, 12 on foot and 11 by public transport, and a food shop about 8 minutes' walk or 7 by car. Getting to work is about 14 minutes by car and 16 by public transport. The hospital is the outlier, about 21 minutes by car and 46 by public transport. Distances to fixed places hold up well, but the public transport times all come from the 2019 survey and bus services have been cut in places since, so they are the shakiest numbers in the set. A household without a car has an easy day-to-day life here until someone needs a hospital appointment.
The buses are better than the commute figures suggest. On weekdays each of the 78 stops with service data has an average of about 173 scheduled departures, roughly 10 an hour at the peak, and every one of them has a weekend service. That is a bus network you can use without checking the timetable, in a town where few people do.
Broadband is the strongest part of the picture. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 95% of premises, superfast about 98%, and none fall below the universal service minimum. Mobile coverage is complete: every postcode gets 4G or 5G from at least one operator, and from all of them. For a third of the workforce, the fibre is the commute.
Road noise is the cost of a town that drives. Every postcode in Chessington lies near road noise at or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats traffic as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise registers nowhere, though that says more about how few trains run than anything else. The noise maps show which side of a house faces the main road, and it is worth checking at the viewing which rooms sit on that side.
There are 26 public charge points with 36 connectors between them, 4 of them rapid units. With four rapid points, charging is something an electric car owner plans in advance, and most will do it on their own drive.
Chessington is reasonably well connected, better than average without being excellent: excellent broadband and frequent buses, a railway few people use, and a car on most drives.