Dorking is better wired than it is served. Every home can get superfast broadband. Hardly anyone takes the train to work. The nearest hospital is the best part of half an hour away by car. In Dorking the cable does more commuting than the residents do.
Dorking has three stations of its own. Dorking station runs direct trains to London Victoria, London Waterloo and Horsham, while Dorking Deepdene and Dorking West sit on the line between Reading and Gatwick Airport. Box Hill & Westhumble, Holmwood and Betchworth stations serve the villages around it. For all that track, only about 3% of working residents took the train to work at the 2021 Census, and under 1% took the bus, despite 78 bus stops in the area.
Here's how people actually get to work: about 44% work from home and about 38% drive. About 9% walk, which in a town this compact is the most sensible option going, and cycling barely registers at about 1%. Only about 16% of households have no car, while about 39% have two or more. Most of Dorking's commute happens either on a laptop or on the road, and the timetable is someone else's problem.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics are modelled for the area as a whole, not a route from any particular door, and the public transport figures date from 2019, so treat those with more caution than the car and walking times. On those figures the nearest town centre is about 9 minutes by car, 12 by bike, 13 by public transport and 19 on foot. A doctor's surgery is about 9 minutes by car, 12 by public transport or 18 on foot. A food shop is about 7 minutes by car or 10 on foot. Jobs are about 5 minutes away by car and 21 by public transport. The hospital is the outlier: about 26 minutes by car and about 53 by public transport. Nobody wants to spend the longest leg of their week getting to an appointment, but that's the trade for living in the hills.
The buses are more useful than the commuting figures suggest. Stops average about 43 scheduled departures each on a weekday, about 3 in the peak hour, and about 88% of stops with timetable data have some weekend service. That's a working bus network, not two buses a day and a prayer.
Broadband is Dorking's strongest suit. About 88% of premises can get gigabit speeds, every premises can get superfast, and none falls below the legal minimum. For a town where working from home is the most common commute, that isn't a perk. It's the infrastructure the town actually runs on.
Mobile coverage is complete: indoor 4G or 5G from at least one operator reaches every postcode, and from all operators about 99%.
Road noise is the cost of sitting where two main roads cross. Effectively every postcode, a figure that rounds to 100%, sits near or above the 65-decibel threshold at which official mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate and much smaller source, with about 2% of postcodes near that threshold and a loudest band of 65 decibels. Neither tells you how a particular bedroom will sound, so visit at rush hour.
Charging an electric car is still something you plan. There are 12 public charge points in the area with 26 connectors between them, and only one of those points is rapid. With one rapid unit, charging is something you schedule, not something you do while buying bread.
Dorking is better connected than average, strong on broadband and buses, reasonable by car, and let down only by a long trip to hospital and a rail network most residents leave to the day-trippers.