Hammersmith is well connected for anyone happy to use the Underground or a bus, and less so for anyone who needs a mainline train. Four Underground lines stop in the centre. Buses come every couple of minutes at the busiest times. Most households have no car. Over half of working residents didn't commute at all when last counted.
The centre has two Underground stations, between them serving the Piccadilly, District, Circle and Hammersmith & City lines, and one of them shares the Broadway building with a large bus station. Mainline rail is in the neighbouring districts, at Shepherds Bush and Kensington (Olympia) to the north and east, and Barnes Bridge across the river. At the 2021 census only about 2% of working residents took the train to work and 7% the bus. The area has 154 bus stops.
How people actually got to work at that census is the more telling figure. About 54% of working residents worked from home, 10% walked, 8% drove and 5% cycled. About six in ten households have no car at all, and only about 7% have more than one. The A4 crosses the area on the Hammersmith Flyover, a viaduct over the gyratory below, so most of its traffic passes over Hammersmith without stopping, and with car ownership this low that suits the people underneath. Hammersmith Bridge closed to traffic, cyclists and pedestrians in August 2020, cutting off the direct route south to Barnes.
The Department for Transport models the trip from Hammersmith to the nearest town centre at about 8 minutes by car, 9 by bike, 11 by public transport and 11 on foot. Those are averages for the area, and walking is as quick as anything else.
The same modelling covers everyday trips. A GP is about 7 minutes by car, 7 on foot and 7 by public transport. A food shop is about 5 minutes' walk or 7 by car. The nearest hospital is about 12 minutes by car, 16 by public transport and 19 on foot. A centre of employment is about 3 minutes by car or 8 by public transport. All of these are modelled averages for the whole area. The walking and driving times hold up because the destinations haven't moved, but the public transport times date from 2019, before some services were cut, so those are the least reliable.
The bus service itself is current. Hammersmith's 118 stops with timetable data average about 560 scheduled departures each on a weekday, and about 29 buses an hour at peak. About 99% of stops have a weekend service.
Gigabit broadband is available to about 80% of premises, ultrafast to 84% and superfast to 94%. No premises in the area fall below the legal minimum. Mobile coverage is complete: every postcode gets a 4G or 5G signal from every operator.
Roads are the price of all that traffic. About 72% of Hammersmith's postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels of road noise, the level at which official noise mapping treats traffic as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise doesn't register at that level anywhere in the area. Noise maps work at postcode level and can't tell you what a particular bedroom will hear, so stand outside the flat at rush hour and listen with the windows open, then with them shut.
Hammersmith has 641 public charge points with 691 connectors between them, but only 8 of them are rapid. For most electric car owners here, charging means plugging in overnight on a residential street, not topping up while doing the shopping.
For a commute into central London, the Underground and buses do the job well and the car rarely makes sense. Hammersmith is well connected, short of the best, and weakest on mainline trains.