Well enough, for a town that mostly stays home. Two stations sit inside the town. Half the working population never commutes at all. The buses turn up roughly once an hour. Godalming is connected in the way a good broadband line is connected: very reliably, to wherever you already are.
Rail is the headline. Godalming and Farncombe stations both sit within the town, with Milford and Witley stations serving the villages to the south, and trains run direct to London via Guildford and south towards the coast. Yet only about 3% of working residents commute by train, and about 1% by bus, despite 80 bus stops across the area. The railway is the reason people moved here and the thing most of them use least.
The commute mix tells the real story. About 52% of working residents work from home, about 33% drive, about 8% walk and about 1% cycle. Only about 13% of households have no car, while about 43% have two or more. Godalming's transport strategy, in practice, is a laptop and a second car on the drive for the days the laptop is not enough.
For the nearest town centre, the Department for Transport's journey-time statistics put the trip at about 11 minutes by car, 14 by bike, 17 by public transport and 27 on foot. These are modelled figures for the area as a whole, not a route from any particular door. A town centre that takes nearly half an hour to walk to is a sign of how far the town spreads along the valley.
Broadband is where the town earns its home-working habit. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 70% of premises, superfast about 98%, and no premises fall below the universal service minimum. The remaining gigabit gap is the difference between a smooth video call and a meeting spent saying "can you hear me now".
Mobile is not a worry. At least one operator covers the whole area with 4G or 5G, and all operators cover about 97% of it.
For a typical commute, the choice is simple. If the job is in London or Guildford and the office wants you in a few days a week, the station does its work. If the job is anywhere else, the car does, and the modelled public-transport times below explain why.
The same Department for Transport statistics put a GP about 9 minutes away by car, 17 by public transport and 24 on foot. A food store is about 8 minutes by car and 14 on foot. The nearest hospital is about 23 minutes by car and about 49 by public transport. Employment centres sit about 15 minutes away by car and 19 by public transport, but about 91 minutes on foot, which settles whether walking to work is a lifestyle choice. The public-transport figures date from 2019, and services have been cut in many places since, so treat them with more caution than the car and walk times.
The bus figures are current. Stops across the area average about 18 scheduled departures on a weekday, and about one bus an hour at peak. Every stop has some weekend service, which is better than many towns manage. An hourly bus is a service, but it is a service that decides your day for you.
Road noise is widespread in the mapping. About all of the area's postcodes sit near or above the 65-decibel threshold, the level at which official noise mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate source: about 29% of postcodes sit near the 65-decibel mark from the railway, with nothing louder recorded. None of this predicts how loud any particular house will be, so listen for yourself on the viewing with the windows open.
Electric-vehicle charging is thin. The area has 7 public charge points with 25 connectors between them, 4 of them rapid. With four rapid units, charging is something you plan at home, not something you squeeze in while buying bread.
Godalming is better connected than most towns its size, thanks to two stations and broadband that supports home working. The buses and the chargers are the parts that still need a car to cover for them.