Ewell is well connected, and its best-used connection is the fibre line. Two stations run direct trains into London. At the peak the buses come about seven times an hour. Almost every home can get gigabit broadband. More people here work at the kitchen table than take any train.
Ewell West has trains to London Waterloo, Guildford and Dorking, and Ewell East has trains to London Victoria, London Bridge and Horsham, with Stoneleigh close by on the northern edge. Even so, the 2021 Census found only about 5% of working residents commuting by train. There are 252 bus stops in and around the town, and about 3% of workers used the bus. The trains to London are there, and few people here use them to get to work.
The 2021 Census caught about 42% of Ewell's workers at home and 39% driving. Walking (5%) and cycling (2%) were well behind. About 44% of households have two or more cars, and about 12% have none. Ewell is a car town with good broadband, and it uses its trains less than you would expect from two stations.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times, from 2019, put the nearest town centre about 11 minutes away by car, 12 by bike, 16 by public transport and 21 on foot. On the same 2019 model, a GP is about 9 minutes by car, 15 by public transport and 18 on foot, and a food shop is about 8 minutes' walk. A hospital is about 18 minutes by car and 30 by public transport, and the nearest cluster of jobs is about 15 minutes by car and 14 by public transport. The distances will not have changed since 2019, but buses have been cut since then, so the public transport times are the ones most likely to be optimistic now.
Today's timetables are generous. The stops in Ewell average about 124 scheduled departures each on a weekday and about seven an hour at the peak, and 96% of stops have some service at weekends. That is a working bus network. Few of the commuters use it to get to work, though the bus suits shorter trips around Kingston, Morden and Chessington.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 96% of premises and superfast reaches all of them, with no premises below the legal minimum service level. Every postcode gets 4G or 5G from all operators.
Road noise is the cost of all those roads. Every one of Ewell's postcodes is near or above 65 decibels on the official noise mapping, the level at which road noise counts as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate source and reaches 65 decibels near about 23% of postcodes. The Roman road from Chichester was bent slightly to pass Ewell's spring, and the traffic still follows the route it set. Visit a house on a main road in the rush hour as well as at the weekend, because these figures say nothing about how loud a particular bedroom will be.
There are 13 public charging points in and around Ewell, with 25 connectors, 2 of them rapid. With so few rapid units, most electric car owners will be charging at home on the driveway.
Connections are one of Ewell's strengths. The broadband is close to complete, the rail and bus links are better than most of their users need, and the price is road noise across the whole town.