Crawley is well connected to everything except the trains on its doorstep. It has four stations, and hardly anyone takes a train to work. Nearly half drive. More than a quarter work from home. For a town next to an airport, a surprising number of people never leave the house to get to work.
Crawley, Three Bridges, Ifield and Gatwick Airport stations all serve the town, with direct trains to London, yet only about 3% of working residents take the train to work. The trains are there. The commuters mostly aren't, because most of the jobs are local. Buses carry about 8% of commuters, and there are 432 bus stops across the area.
The commute is a drive or a walk to the spare room. About 47% of working residents drive to work, about 28% work from home, 6% walk and 2% cycle. About a fifth of households have no car and about 38% run two or more. The multi-car household is the town's default, and the double driveway is how the planners' neighbourhoods have filled up since.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics, modelled for the area rather than measured from any particular door, put the nearest town centre about 11 minutes away by car, 19 by public transport, 16 by bike and 32 on foot. The walk time is the one to note: the neighbourhoods were designed around their own parades, and the town centre was never meant to be a stroll away from all of them.
Everyday destinations are close. A GP is about 8 minutes by car, 10 by public transport and 11 on foot, and a food shop about 7 minutes whether you walk or drive. Employment is about 15 minutes by car and 10 by public transport, one of the rare places where the bus beats the car to the job. The hospital is the exception: about 29 minutes by car and 57 by public transport. Those public transport times date from 2019 and services have been cut since, so they deserve more caution than the car and walk figures. Anyone with regular hospital appointments should plan around a car.
The buses themselves are a working service. Each stop averages about 185 scheduled departures on a weekday and about 10 an hour at peak, and about 98% of stops have some service at weekends. A stop with a bus every six minutes is a timetable nobody needs to learn.
Broadband is strong. Gigabit-capable broadband reaches about 89% of premises and superfast about 98%, which is why the spare bedroom in Crawley can double as an office. Mobile coverage is complete, with 4G or 5G from at least one operator and from all operators at 100% of the area.
Road noise is the cost of all this tarmac. Effectively every postcode, about 100%, sits near or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels or more. Rail noise is a separate source: about 47% of postcodes sit near or above the same 65-decibel threshold for trains, again with a loudest band of 75 or more. Neither figure says how loud any particular bedroom will be, so visit on a weekday morning, not a Sunday afternoon.
Electric car owners have 26 public charge points in the area with 70 connectors between them, 9 of them rapid. Nine rapid units for a town this size means topping up is something you plan, not something you do while the shopping goes in the boot.
For everyday life, the picture is a town where the shops, the GP and the job are all short hops, the bus is a real option, and the car handles everything else. Crawley is better connected than most towns its size, provided the trip isn't to the hospital and nobody minds the traffic noise.