Harpenden is well connected by rail and broadband, and less so for everything else. A station on the main line runs direct to central London. Almost every home can get gigabit broadband. Most residents worked from home at the last census anyway. The hospital is a long trip, and charging an electric car is harder than it should be.
Harpenden Rail Station has direct trains to central London and north to Luton Airport Parkway Rail Station, one stop up the line, with St Albans City Rail Station the next stop south. At the 2021 census only about 4% of working residents commuted by train. Buses carried under 1% of commuters, despite 152 bus stops in and around the town.
The 2021 census found about 61% of working residents working from home, about 26% driving, about 5% walking and about 1% cycling. Only about 10% of households have no car, and about 48% have two or more. The railway made Harpenden, and in 2021 most of Harpenden had either moved into the home office or was sitting in the car.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey-time statistics put the nearest town centre about 9 minutes away by car, 14 by public transport, 12 by bike and 21 on foot, averaged across the area.
The same 2019 modelling gives about 9 minutes to a GP by car, 17 by public transport and 25 on foot. A hospital is about 25 minutes by car and 54 by public transport. A food shop is about 8 minutes by car or 13 on foot, and the nearest employment centre is about 14 minutes by car or 9 by public transport. Those are area averages, and while the distances behind them have not moved, bus services have changed since 2019, so the public transport times are the shakiest of the lot. Nearly an hour by bus to a hospital is the figure to take seriously if anyone in the house does not drive.
The buses are better than the commuting figures suggest. Each stop averages about 36 scheduled departures on a weekday and about three in the peak hour, and every stop with timetable data has a weekend service. That is a usable bus network, which the town has mostly decided to ignore in favour of the car.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 92% of premises and superfast about 99%, and no postcode falls below the legal minimum service. Mobile coverage is complete, with every network reaching every postcode. For a town where most people work from home, that is the infrastructure that counts.
Road noise reaches the 65-decibel level on official noise mapping, the point at which it counts as significant, near every one of Harpenden's postcodes, and the loudest band recorded is 75 decibels or more. Rail noise is mapped separately, and about 33% of postcodes sit near the same 65-decibel level from the railway, again with a loudest band of 75 decibels or more. The main line came through in 1868 and has been running past back gardens ever since. The government's published noise maps show the bands street by street, so check whether a house is on a busy road or backs onto the line before getting attached to the garden.
There are two public charge points in the area, with four connectors between them and no rapid chargers. With nearly half of households running two or more cars, charging an electric one here is something you do at home overnight, because there is nowhere quick to top up on the way past.
Harpenden is better connected than average, carried by the main line and the fibre, with the buses, the hospital trip and the chargers dragging it back towards the middle.