Edgware is very well connected, as long as you're happy to use a bus. There are buses at nearly every stop, every few minutes. Gigabit broadband reaches nine homes in ten. A quarter of households don't own a car at all. The trains are the weaker part, and the bus network more than makes up for them.
The London Underground serves the area, and mainline trains are within reach at Mill Hill Broadway, Hendon and Elstree & Borehamwood. At the 2021 Census only about 4% of working residents took the train to work. The area has 219 bus stops, and about 9% of workers commuted by bus.
The biggest shares of the commute were people who stayed at home and people who drove, about 31% each. About 5% walked, and cycling barely registered at about 1%. About a quarter of households have no car, and about 30% have two or more. That gives Edgware two quite different kinds of household, one that drives everywhere and one that doesn't drive at all.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times for the area, from 2019, put the nearest town centre about 9 minutes away by car, 10 by bike, 13 by public transport and 15 on foot. When walking takes only six minutes longer than driving, the car is mostly about having somewhere to put the shopping.
The same statistics put a GP about 8 minutes away by car and about 10 on foot or by public transport, and a food shop about 8 minutes' walk or 7 minutes' drive. A main employment centre is about 9 minutes by car or 17 by public transport. A hospital is about 21 minutes by car or 36 by public transport. These are modelled averages for the area. The distances don't change, but the public transport times are from 2019 and some services have been cut since, so those are the least reliable of the set. The hospital is the one long trip on the list, in a town that campaigned to save its general hospital and lost in 1997.
The bus figures are current, and they are strong. The average stop sees about 494 departures on a weekday and around 28 an hour at peak, and about 99% of stops have some service at the weekend. Nobody in Edgware learns the timetable, because the next bus is always about to arrive.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 90% of premises, superfast about 99%, and no postcode falls below the legal minimum service. Every mobile network covers the whole area for 4G or 5G.
Road noise is everywhere. Almost every postcode in Edgware is close to or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road traffic as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate source and reaches the same 65-decibel threshold near about 13% of postcodes. Neither figure tells you how a given house sounds with the windows closed, so visit the street at rush hour and listen for yourself.
The area has 34 public charge points with 50 connectors, and 3 of them are rapid. With only three rapid points, charging an electric car is something you plan in advance, not something you fit in while doing the shopping.
For a typical commute, the realistic options are a bus that comes often, a mainline station a short ride away, or the car most households already own. Commuters who drive everywhere will find the roads are the noisy part.
Edgware is very well connected for daily life: frequent buses, nearly complete fast broadband and short trips to most things. The only exceptions are the hospital and the lack of a mainline station of its own.