Golders Green is well connected for a suburb, because its Northern line station is also one of north London's main bus hubs. The buses run constantly, weekends included. Gigabit broadband reaches most homes. About half of working residents barely commute at all. What the transport links cost you is road noise, and the trip to hospital is longer than everything else here.
The area's Underground station is on the Northern line in fare zone 3, and the bus station on its forecourt is where routes into central London and across the north of the city start or stop. National rail is less of a local habit: stations such as Cricklewood, Hendon and Brent Cross West serve neighbouring areas, and only about 2% of working residents named the train as their commute at the 2021 census. Buses carried about 8%, from 178 stops across the area. For a suburb built around a station, the suburb's own bus network matters more than the national rail.
At that census, 49% of working residents mostly worked from home. Of those who travelled, about 20% drove, 6% walked and 2% cycled. About 35% of households have no car, and about 25% have two or more. That splits the area into homes that have given up on the car and homes that need more than one.
The bus figures are current and they are strong. Each stop averages about 308 scheduled weekday departures, with around 16 buses an hour at peak, and about 95% of stops have some weekend service. Nobody here needs to learn a timetable, because the next bus is never far off.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics are modelled averages for the area, and the public transport times date from 2019, so services have had years to change since. Those distances themselves are fixed, though. On those figures the nearest town centre takes about 8 minutes by car or by bike, 10 by public transport and 10 on foot. A GP is about 7 minutes away by car and 8 on foot or by bus, and a food shop about 8 minutes' walk. Getting to work takes about 6 minutes by car, 5 by bike and 19 by public transport, against 59 on foot. The hospital is the outlier, at about 20 minutes by car, 29 by public transport and 56 on foot. Day to day almost everything is within easy reach, and the hospital is the one trip that needs planning.
Gigabit broadband is available to about 85% of premises and superfast broadband to 99%, with no premises recorded below the minimum service level the law guarantees. Mobile coverage from every network reaches the whole area. For the half of the workforce that works from home, the connection is fast enough not to get in the way.
The cost of all this is the noise. On official noise mapping, which treats 65 decibels as the point where road noise becomes significant, every postcode in the area is near a road at that level, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. Rail is a separate source, and about 13% of postcodes are near rail noise at the same threshold, also peaking at 75 decibels. A suburb built where several roads meet carries the traffic of all of them. Listen outside the house at rush hour as well as at a Sunday viewing, because noise mapping can't tell you how a particular bedroom will sound.
There are 19 public charge points with 23 connectors between them, and 3 of them are rapid. With only three rapid units, most owners will need to plan their charging, or have a home charger.
Golders Green is well connected for the north London suburbs: the tube, the buses and the broadband are all strong. The trade-off is noise from the roads that carry those buses, and a hospital trip that needs a car.