Chinnor is well connected by car and by cable, and much less so by anything with a timetable. Almost nobody commutes by train. Almost nobody commutes by bus. Half drive, and nearly two in five work from home. The broadband reaches nearly every home, and the bus is the part that lets people down.
Princes Risborough is the nearest station, and at the 2021 Census about 1% of Chinnor's working residents went to work by train. Chinnor has 39 bus stops, and about 1% commuted by bus. Both services exist on paper. Neither carries many of Chinnor's commuters.
The car does most of the work. At the 2021 Census about 51% of working residents drove to work and 39% worked from home, with about 4% walking and 1% cycling. About 61% of households had two or more cars and about 7% had none. Most of Chinnor's travel happens either on the drive or at the desk.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics, which are modelled from 2019, put the nearest town centre about 14 minutes away by car, 27 by public transport, 33 by bike and 92 on foot. Ninety-two minutes is the finding: walking into town takes a morning, not a lunch break.
Broadband is where Chinnor is strongest. Gigabit broadband is available to about 94% of premises, ultrafast to about 95% and superfast to all of them, with none below the government's minimum service level. Mobile coverage is near-complete too, with some 4G or 5G signal everywhere and every network across about 99% of the village.
In practice, the typical commute out of Chinnor is a car trip, or no trip at all. Anyone who needs public transport to get to work should plan the route from the house before committing to the house.
For everyday trips, the same Department for Transport statistics give modelled averages for the area. Distances to fixed places do not change much, but the public transport times date from 2019 and bus services have been cut since, so they are the least reliable of the set. A food shop is about a 12-minute walk or 7 minutes by car. A GP is about 13 minutes by car, 24 by public transport or 84 on foot, so walking to the surgery is about as realistic as walking to town. A hospital is about 26 minutes by car and 45 by public transport. Employment comes out at 27 minutes by public transport and 52 by car, an odd result that probably reflects where the model places the jobs more than how fast either way of travelling is.
The bus figures are current. Chinnor's stops average about 13 scheduled departures each on a weekday, and the average at peak hour rounds to zero, which is an ambitious way to run a rush hour. Only 14 of the 39 stops, about 36%, have any weekend service at all. Anyone relying on the bus should check the timetable at the stop nearest the house, because at most of Chinnor's stops Saturday's timetable is blank.
Every postcode in Chinnor is near or above 65 decibels for road noise on the official mapping, the level at which noise is treated as significant, with the loudest band reaching 75 decibels. Rail noise is mapped separately, and every postcode is near the 65-decibel threshold for that too, peaking at 65 decibels. These are modelled bands for the area and say nothing about how loud any one house sounds with the windows shut.
Chinnor is middling for connections. The fibre and the car serve it well, while the bus and the train offer a villager without a car very little.