Gravesend is very well connected, mainly because of its railway station. High-speed trains run from it to London. Gigabit broadband reaches most homes. Every mobile network covers almost the whole town. The weak spot is the hospital, a long bus ride away.
Gravesend Rail Station is on the high-speed line to St Pancras and Stratford International, with metro services into central London and out to the Medway towns. Ebbsfleet International and Northfleet are a short hop west. Only about 6% of working residents took the train to work at the 2021 census, and about 4% took the bus, from a town with 220 stops. The passenger ferry across the Thames to Tilbury ran until 31 March 2024 and has not been replaced, so Essex is in view from the river front and a long drive round by road.
The 2021 census shows how Gravesend gets to work. About 49% drove, about 25% worked from home, about 7% walked and about 1% cycled. About 22% of households have no car and about 36% have two or more. For a town where the trains are the main selling point, Gravesend is still mostly a driving town.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times put the nearest town centre about 11 minutes away by car, 18 by public transport, 15 by bike and 28 on foot, averaged across the area. On those numbers the bike beats the bus, and hardly anyone uses one.
The same Department for Transport statistics give a GP about 8 minutes by car, 10 by public transport and 12 on foot, and a food shop about 8 minutes' walk or 7 by car. Employment is about 10 minutes by car and 16 by public transport. The hospital is the outlier, at about 23 minutes by car and 52 by public transport. All of these are modelled averages for the area. The distances do not change, but the public transport times date from 2019 and some services have been cut since, so those are the least reliable numbers in the set. The 52 minutes is the figure to plan around for anyone without a car.
The buses are a real service here. The stops with timetable data average 46 departures on a weekday and about two an hour at peak, and about 79% of them have some service at the weekend. Two buses an hour gets people where they are going without anyone needing to learn the timetable.
Ofcom puts gigabit broadband within reach of about 86% of premises in Gravesend, ultrafast at about 90% and superfast at about 97%, and no premises fall below the legal minimum. Mobile is just as good, with at least one 4G or 5G network across the whole area and all four across about 99% of it.
Road noise reaches almost everywhere. More than 99% of postcodes are close to or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road traffic as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is mapped separately, and about 43% of postcodes are near the 65-decibel mark for trains, with a loudest band of 70. The railway that sells the town is also loud for nearly half of it. Check both noise maps for the exact address, because on these figures most streets have some traffic noise and many have trains as well.
Electric car drivers have 5 public charge points in the area with 11 connectors between them, 3 of them rapid. With so few, most charging in Gravesend happens on a home driveway.
Gravesend is very well connected by rail and broadband, and the buses are better than most people expect. The hospital journey without a car is the one real gap.