Denham is well placed for a car and only middling for everything else. It has two stations, and hardly anyone uses them to get to work. Buses run all week but not often. Broadband is good. Most residents either drive or work from home.
Denham Rail Station has direct trains to London Marylebone and High Wycombe. Denham Golf Club Rail Station is also in the parish, and Gerrards Cross and West Ruislip stations are within reach. Even so, only about 2% of working residents took the train to work at the 2021 census, and about 2% took the bus from the area's 13 stops. A village with a station named after its golf club still commutes by car.
At the 2021 census, about 44% of working residents drove to work and about 40% worked from home. Walking accounted for about 4% and cycling barely registered. About half of households have two or more cars and about 10% have none. Census day fell during the pandemic, so the work-from-home share was probably higher then than now. Even allowing for that, driving is how Denham gets about.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics are modelled averages for the area, and the public-transport times date from 2019. Distances haven't changed since then, but bus and train services may have, so those times are the least reliable of the set. On that model, the nearest town centre is about 11 minutes by car, 16 by public transport, 17 by bike and 33 on foot. A GP is about 10 minutes by car, 17 by public transport and 25 on foot. The nearest hospital is about 18 minutes by car or 34 by public transport. A food shop is about 7 minutes by car or a 9-minute walk, and employment is about 9 minutes by car or 12 by public transport. Food is walkable. A doctor's appointment, for most people, means getting in the car.
The buses are more of a service than the commuting figures suggest. Each stop gets an average of about 42 scheduled departures on a weekday, roughly 2 an hour at peak, and all 12 stops with timetable data have some weekend service. That is a usable bus. It just isn't frequent enough to beat a car in the drive.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 87% of premises and superfast about 97%. Mobile coverage is close to complete, with every network covering about 98% of the area. With that much of the village working from home, the broadband matters more than the trains.
Road noise is the price of the motorway junction. About 98% of Denham's postcodes are close to road noise of 65 decibels or more, the level at which official mapping counts it as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels and above. Rail noise doesn't appear at that level anywhere in the village. How loud a particular house is depends on its walls, windows and which way it faces. So visit at rush hour, go into the bedroom at the back, and listen with the window open.
There is 1 public charge point in the area, with 5 connectors and no rapid units. Charging an electric car away from home here takes planning.
For a typical commuter, Denham means a short drive to work, a station for the occasional trip into London, and a bus that is fine for errands. People without a car can manage. People with one hardly think about it.
Overall, Denham's connections are middling. The road access and the broadband are good, but the trains and buses carry far fewer people to work.