Eltham is very well connected for a place with no Underground station. Three stations of its own run trains towards central London. Nearly every bus stop still has a service at the weekend. Fast broadband reaches almost every front door. The car is optional here, which is exactly what you want in a suburb this busy.
Rail runs on two separate lines. Eltham station serves one, and Mottingham and New Eltham sit on the other, about a kilometre to the south. Falconwood and Kidbrooke are close by on the fringes. Trains head west to Charing Cross, Cannon Street and Victoria. The two lines used to give Eltham two stations of its own, Eltham Well Hall and Eltham Park, which were both closed in 1985 and replaced by the current Eltham station, built over a new relief road. The town gave up a station and gained a road under the platform. North Greenwich is the nearest Tube, a few miles off. At the 2021 Census about 11% of working residents took the train to work and about 8% the bus, from 280 bus stops across the area. Work out which line your house is closest to, because Eltham station and the Mottingham and New Eltham pair run to different places, and a house that looks central on the map can be on the wrong line for your office.
The commute here is split between home and the car. In the 2021 Census about 37% of working residents worked from home and about 29% drove. Walking accounted for about 4% and cycling about 1%. About 29% of households have no car and about 24% have two or more. Plenty of households never needed a car and plenty more need two, and the trains end up mostly carrying office workers into town.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times put the nearest town centre about 9 minutes away by car, 16 by public transport, 12 by bike and 23 on foot. A GP is about 8 minutes by car, 12 on foot and 11 by public transport, and a food shop about 7 minutes whether you walk or drive. A hospital is about 16 minutes by car and 32 by public transport. A place of work is about 7 minutes by car and 14 by public transport. These are modelled averages for the area from 2019. Car and walking times to fixed destinations change little, but bus services have been cut since then, so the public transport times are the shakiest of the set. Hospitals are the one trip where the car wins clearly.
The buses are a real service. Across the 262 stops with timetable data, the average stop has 221 scheduled departures on a weekday and about 13 an hour at peak, and about 97% of stops have some service at the weekend. Those are current timetables, so they are more reliable than the modelled journey times.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 94% of premises, ultrafast about 96% and superfast all of them. Mobile coverage is complete, with every network reaching the whole area, so the home office has nothing to complain about.
Road noise covers almost all of Eltham. Nearly 100% of postcodes are near 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 is a separate source, with about 15% of postcodes near or above 65 decibels from trains and a loudest band of 70. A town built around a road to Maidstone and then a relief road has never been quiet about traffic.
The area has 21 public charge points with 51 connectors between them, and 8 of those are rapid units. With only eight rapid units, most electric-car owners will be charging on the driveway.
Connectivity is one of Eltham's real strengths: three stations, a bus network that keeps running at weekends and broadband to every door make it one of the easier suburbs to leave and come back to.