Didcot is well connected on paper and over broadband, and less so in everyday commuting. It has a main-line junction station. Hardly anyone uses it to get to work. The broadband is excellent. The car still does most of the commuting.
Didcot Parkway is a junction on the Great Western Main Line, and Appleford, Culham and Cholsey stations are nearby. Only about 2% of working residents took the train to work at the 2021 census, and about 2% took the bus, even though 112 bus stops serve the town. A railway made Didcot a town in 1844, and the town has been driving ever since.
At that census, about 44% of working residents drove to work and about 37% worked from home. Walking accounted for about 7% and cycling about 3%. About 14% of households had no car, and about 43% had two or more. Two in five households with more than one car is a lot for a town with a junction station in it.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey-time statistics put the nearest town centre about 8 minutes away by car, 11 by bike, 15 by public transport and 18 on foot, on average across the area. The same modelling puts a GP surgery about 8 minutes away by car, 13 by public transport and 15 on foot, a food shop about 7 minutes away whether you walk or drive, and an employment centre about 13 minutes away by car or public transport and 3 by bike. A hospital is the outlier, at about 38 minutes by car and 54 by public transport. All of these are 2019 averages for the area. The car and walking times hold up because the destinations have not moved, but the public transport times predate later service cuts and are the least reliable of the set.
The buses are better than the commuting figures suggest. Across the 97 stops with timetable data, the average stop has about 52 scheduled departures on a weekday and about 3 in the peak hour, and about 60% of stops have some service at weekends. Four in ten stops falling silent at weekends matters a great deal to anyone without a car.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 85% of premises, ultrafast about 87% and superfast about 99%, and every network's 4G or 5G signal reaches about 99% of the area. For a town where more than a third worked from home, the cable is the connection that counts.
Every postcode in Didcot is at or near 65 decibels of road noise, the level at which official noise mapping treats traffic as significant, and the loudest band reaches 75 decibels and above. Rail noise is a separate source, and about 94% of postcodes are at or near the same threshold from trains, also topping out at 75 decibels or more. Anyone who wants a quiet bedroom should look up the specific street on the government's strategic noise maps, because a junction town carries its noise in two directions.
Didcot has 4 public charging points with 6 connectors between them, and 1 of them is rapid. A single rapid charger for the whole town means charging is something you plan in advance.
Didcot is reasonably well connected, with strong broadband and a junction station that does more for other towns' commuters than for its own. The car still does most of the daily work.