Hitchin is well connected by rail and better connected by cable. Direct trains run to London and Cambridge. Nine in ten homes can get gigabit broadband. Almost half the workforce stayed at home at the last count anyway. The car still does most of the rest.
Hitchin Rail Station has direct trains to London Kings Cross and to Cambridge, and Letchworth Garden City, Stevenage and Baldock stations are all close by. For all that, about 5% of Hitchin's working residents took the train to work at the 2021 census. Buses use 158 stops across the town, and about 1% of workers commuted by bus. A town on the line between London and Cambridge, with a station people move here for, sends one worker in twenty to it on a census morning.
The real commute mix is home and car. At the 2021 census, taken while working from home was still common practice, about 48% of Hitchin's workers did so, about 34% drove, about 8% walked and about 1% cycled. About 18% of households have no car, while about 35% have two or more.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey-time statistics for the area, from 2019, put the nearest town centre about 9 minutes away by car, 15 by public transport, 12 by bike and 20 on foot. A GP is about 8 minutes by car, 13 by public transport and 18 on foot. A hospital is about 18 minutes by car and 33 by public transport. A food shop is about 7 minutes by car or 8 on foot, and the nearest cluster of jobs is about 10 minutes by car or 11 by public transport. The distances behind those figures do not move, but the public transport times are seven years old and bus services have been trimmed since, so they are the ones to trust least. The food shop within an eight-minute walk is the figure that most changes daily life.
Bus stops in Hitchin average about 37 scheduled departures each on a weekday and about 3 in the peak hour, and about 89% of stops have at least some weekend service. Those are current timetable counts, not the modelled times above. Three buses an hour is a service; it is just not one anybody sets their watch by.
Broadband is the strongest part of the picture. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 90% of premises, and superfast about 99%. Mobile coverage is near complete, with 4G or 5G from at least one network across the town and from every network at almost every postcode.
Road noise is everywhere. Nearly every Hitchin postcode, about 100%, sits near or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road traffic as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels or more. Rail noise is a separate source and touches about 13% of postcodes, with the loudest band also at 75 decibels or more. The government's strategic noise maps show both for any address, and a house near the line is worth looking up on the rail layer as well as the road one.
There are 10 public charge points in the area with 20 connectors between them, 2 of them rapid. With two rapid units for the whole town, charging is something to plan around a home driveway, and the shopping trip is no substitute.
For a typical Hitchin commute, that adds up to a short drive or walk to the station for anyone heading to London or Cambridge, a car for most local trips, and a fibre line for everyone who has decided not to go anywhere.
Hitchin is better connected than most market towns its size, with the railway and the broadband doing the heavy work and the buses and charge points lagging some way behind.