Forest Hill is well connected, mostly thanks to a railway station that does far more than its share of the work. There are two stations on the hill. Buses come past every few minutes at peak. Broadband is fast almost everywhere. It is connected well enough that about half the residents found they could stop using any of it.
Forest Hill station runs direct trains to London Bridge and to Crystal Palace, among other routes, and Honor Oak Park station serves the other end of the hill, with Sydenham and Brockley stations a short way off. Despite all that, the 2021 census found only about 7% of working residents commuting by train. There are 126 bus stops in and around the area, and about 9% of workers took the bus.
What residents mostly did was stay put. In the 2021 census about 53% of working residents worked from home, about 14% drove, and walking and cycling took about 4% each. Around 43% of households have no car and only about 12% have two or more. The trains run to London Bridge; on census day, half of Forest Hill commuted as far as the kettle.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey-time statistics put the nearest town centre about 9 minutes away by car, 14 by public transport, 11 by bike and 17 on foot. A town centre within a quarter-hour walk is about as close as anyone on a hill can ask for.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 90% of premises and superfast about 97%, and every part of the area gets 4G or 5G on every network. For the half of the area who log on instead of travelling, the line in matters more than the line out.
The area has 80 public charge points with 92 connectors between them, and two of those are rapid units. Two rapid chargers make charging something an owner plans around and tops up overnight, and very few will be charging while they shop.
For a commuter into central London the station does the job directly, and for anyone working closer to home a bike or a short drive gets to most places quickly. The weakness is outward travel by road, where the area relies on the same streets as everyone else in south-east London.
Everyday destinations are close. The Department for Transport's figures, modelled for 2019, put a GP about 7 minutes away by car, 9 on foot and 9 by public transport, a food shop about 7 minutes on foot or by car, and employment about 10 minutes by car or 19 by public transport. A hospital is about 14 minutes by car and 26 by public transport. The distances will not have moved since 2019; the public transport times assume the services that ran that year, so they are the figures most likely to have aged.
The buses are a proper service. The stops in the area average about 265 scheduled weekday departures each, with about 14 an hour at peak, and every stop has a weekend service. Those are current departure counts, and a bus that often makes timetables pointless.
Noise is the cost of all those connections. About 17% of the area's postcodes are near or above 65 decibels from road traffic, the level at which official noise mapping treats it as significant, and the loudest band present is 75 decibels and over. Rail noise is a separate source and a bigger one here: about 50% of postcodes are near or above 65 decibels from trains, again with a loudest band of 75 and over. Before committing to a flat near the line, look up the address on the government's strategic noise maps and visit at rush hour. The railway that makes Forest Hill work is also the thing half the area can hear.
Forest Hill is better connected than most of outer south-east London, with a good railway, frequent buses and broadband almost nobody has to worry about. Travel by road is the weaker part, and the trains bring noise with them.