Well connected to a screen, less so to anywhere else. The railway closed and never came back. Nearly half of working residents drive. Almost a third work from home. Broadband arrives faster than the bus does. This is a town that solved its transport problem largely by deciding not to travel.
There is no railway station. The main line through the town closed in 1966 under the Beeching cuts, and the nearest station now sits far enough away that no direct bus route connects to it. Under 1% of working residents commute by train, which is roughly what happens when the option exists only in theory. Buses carry the public transport load instead, from 57 stops across the area, accounting for about 2% of commutes.
The commute mix tells the real story. Around 47% of working residents drive. Roughly 31% work from home, which is the second-largest group and the single most important fact about how this place moves. About 13% walk and around 2% cycle. On car ownership, roughly 19% of households have no car at all while about 35% have two or more, and both of those numbers are honest: one group has organised its life around a compact town centre, the other around the fact that leaving it requires a vehicle.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics put the nearest town centre at about 7 minutes by car, roughly 9 by public transport, about 9 by bicycle and about 9 on foot. Those are modelled figures for the area rather than a route from any particular front door. The interesting part is that all four numbers are nearly identical, which is a compliment to the town's size rather than to its buses.
Broadband is the strongest connection Glastonbury has. About 77% of premises can get a gigabit line, roughly 80% can get ultrafast and around 99% can get superfast. For a small town on the edge of drained wetland, that is a considerably better result than the road network manages.
Mobile coverage reaches about 100% of the area from at least one operator and roughly 97% from all four, which makes it one of the few things here nobody needs to check before viewing.
The same journey-time statistics put a doctor's surgery at about 7 minutes by car and roughly 9 on foot, and a food store at about 7 minutes either way. Employment centres sit about 8 minutes away by car and roughly 35 by public transport. The hospital is the outlier by a wide margin: about 39 minutes by car, roughly 77 by public transport, and 120 minutes walking, which is the statistical way of recording that walking is not a plan. Those public transport times were modelled in 2019 and services have been withdrawn since, so treat them as the generous version.
Stops are not the same as a service, and here the service holds up. Of the 57 stops in the area, 45 carry scheduled service data, and those average around 163 departures on a weekday with about 9 buses an hour at peak. Every one of those 45 stops has some weekend service, which is not the norm in rural Somerset and is worth more to a household without a car than any number of empty shelters would be.
Road noise is close to universal. Around 100% of postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels, the threshold at which official noise mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band present in the area reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise registers at zero, for reasons the town has had since 1966.
Electric charging is thin. There are 7 public charge points in the area, carrying 15 connectors between them, of which 1 is rapid. That makes charging something you schedule rather than something you do while picking up shopping, and anyone buying an electric car here should be counting on a home charger.
Connectivity comes out middling, and it divides cleanly along one line. Digitally the town is well served, locally everything is a few minutes away in any mode you like, and beyond the town boundary you are driving. If your working life travels down a cable, Glastonbury handles it. If it involves a platform, it does not.