Highgate is well connected, and its residents make less use of the connections than almost anyone. Buses stop at the average stop hundreds of times a weekday. Fibre broadband reaches most homes. The Northern line runs through the area. On census day, about two-thirds of working residents never left home.
Highgate is served by the Northern line, which runs north to High Barnet and Mill Hill East and south through Central London to Morden. Nearby rail stations include Upper Holloway, Gospel Oak, Hampstead Heath, Crouch Hill and Hornsey. Only about 1% of working residents commuted by train at the 2021 Census and about 4% by bus, even though there are 154 bus stops in the area. The stations are within easy reach, and few people here were using them.
The 2021 Census was taken during the pandemic, and it found about 65% of Highgate's working residents working from home. About 9% drove to work, 5% walked and 4% cycled. About 44% of households have no car, and about 14% have two or more. Highgate Hill has views across central London, and on census day that was as close as most of its workers got to the office.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics are modelled averages for the area, and the public transport figures date from 2019, so they have aged more than the driving and walking times. On that basis, the nearest town centre is about 7 minutes away by car, 8 by bike, 10 by public transport and 11 on foot. A GP is about 7 minutes by car and 8 on foot or by public transport, and a food shop is about a 6-minute walk. Hospitals are further off, at about 10 minutes by car, 16 by public transport and 19 on foot. The nearest large cluster of jobs is about 8 minutes by car and 14 by public transport, but 35 minutes on foot. Most daily errands can be done on foot here, while a hospital trip or a commute on foot takes noticeably longer.
The bus figures are current, unlike the modelled journey times. The average stop sees about 466 scheduled departures on a weekday and about 25 in the peak hour, and all 137 stops with timetable data have a weekend service. At that frequency nobody needs to check a timetable.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 83% of premises, and superfast about 99%. Every postcode gets 4G or 5G on at least one network, and on every network too.
Road noise is the cost of all those buses. About 75% of postcodes are close to or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band in the area reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate and much smaller issue, with about 4% of postcodes close to or above 65 decibels from trains and a loudest band of 70. A home sold as a village house may well sit by a road busy enough to show up on that map. The government's noise map for the exact street is a quick check, along with a viewing at rush hour with the windows open.
There are 70 public charge points in the area, with 92 connectors between them, and 5 of them are rapid. Charging in Highgate is mostly a slow overnight job, because the rapid units that make a quick top-up possible are few.
Highgate is well connected. It has frequent buses, broadband that reaches almost every home and nearly every errand within a short trip, and it pays for most of that in traffic noise.