Cirencester is well connected by road and badly connected by rail, and the town has arranged its life around that. It has no station of its own. A third of working residents work from home. Close to half drive. The trains stop at Kemble, and Cirencester has largely made its peace with that.
The nearest station is Kemble Rail Station, a few miles west of town, which has trains to London. At the 2021 Census, fewer than 1% of working residents commuted by train and about 1% by bus. The area has 112 bus stops. In the nineteenth century the town had a canal arm and two railway lines. Today the departure board that matters is the coach stop on London Road, with services to Victoria Coach Station and Heathrow.
Working from home and driving dominate the commute. At the 2021 Census, about 45% of working residents drove and 32% worked from home, which leaves 15% walking and 2% cycling. About 20% of households have no car, and 37% have two or more. Those two groups live in the same town and get around it very differently. One walks to the shops, and the other drives past them on the way to the A-road.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey-time statistics, last published for 2019, put the nearest town centre about 9 minutes away by car, 11 by bike, 17 by public transport and 19 on foot. For most people the walk into town is a real option, which is something the car commuters rarely use.
From the same Department for Transport model, the nearest GP is about 8 minutes by car, 14 on foot and 13 by public transport, and a food store about 9 minutes' walk or 7 minutes' drive. Employment centres are about 10 minutes by car and 8 by public transport. A hospital is about 32 minutes by car and 56 by public transport. The model averages the whole area, and the bus times were set in 2019 and are the most likely to be out of date. The hospital times are the ones that stand out. Anything medical beyond the GP means a proper trip out of town.
The buses run, though not often. Of the 79 stops with timetable data, the average stop has about 16 scheduled departures on a weekday and about one an hour at peak, and 89% have some service at the weekend. That is enough to plan around and not enough for anyone to turn up and expect a bus.
Broadband is the strongest part of the picture. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 82% of premises and superfast about 98%. Mobile coverage is near-complete, with every premises able to get at least one 4G or 5G network and about 96% able to get all of them. With a third of residents working from home, the broadband line is now the town's main commuter route.
Road noise reaches the whole town. All of Cirencester's postcodes are near or above 65 decibels on the official road-noise mapping, the level at which that mapping treats traffic noise as significant. The loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise does not show up on the same mapping at all, which is one benefit of the trains stopping at Kemble. The government's noise map for the exact postcode is the thing to look at, because a home backing onto the bypass and a home on a cul-de-sac three streets away are on the same town average.
The area has 6 public charge points with 19 connectors between them, 3 of them rapid. With so few rapid units, charging an electric car mostly happens on your own driveway.
The Romans built Cirencester where the Fosse Way crossed the Churn, and the place still runs on roads. Its connections are middling: fine for anyone with a car and a good broadband line, and a struggle for anyone who needs a station in town.