Holbury is well connected if you drive or work online, and badly connected for almost everyone else. Almost nobody commutes by train. Most people drive to work. Half of households have two or more cars. The broadband is better than the buses. Here, the car is the timetable.
Rail barely comes into it. The nearest stations are Netley, Hamble and Bursledon, and the share of Holbury's workers who took the train to work in the 2021 Census rounds to 0%. There are 28 bus stops in the area, and about 2% of commuters used a bus. Stations that are close on a map don't help much when there's water between you and them.
The commute mix tells the real story. About 63% of working residents drove to work and 22% worked from home. Walking (4%) and cycling (3%) don't add up to much. About 52% of households have two or more cars, and only about 10% have none. A second car here is standard kit, and being without one is a lifestyle choice most people haven't made.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics model each trip for the area as a whole rather than from any particular front door. They put the nearest town centre about 15 minutes away by car, 27 by public transport, 28 by bike and 75 on foot. A 75-minute walk means walking to town isn't a realistic option.
Broadband is the strongest link. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 81% of premises, and superfast broadband about 98%. For the fifth of the workforce who work from home, the fibre does the commuting, and it does it better than the road.
Mobile coverage is close to complete: 4G or 5G from at least one operator reaches 100% of the area, and from all operators about 99%. Changing network won't lose you signal.
Electric car drivers get very little. There's one public charge point in the area, with two connectors, one of them rapid. With one rapid charger for the whole village, most electric car owners will need a charger at home, and anyone without a drive will be planning trips around that one unit.
In practice, a typical commute means getting in the car. Drive and the town centre, the shops and the jobs are close. Rely on anything else and journeys take longer and need more planning.
The same statistics put other everyday trips in a similar pattern. A doctor's surgery is about 12 minutes by car, 23 by public transport or an hour on foot. A hospital is about 31 minutes by car and about 86 by public transport. A food shop is about 14 minutes' walk or 8 minutes' drive. Employment centres are about 17 minutes by car and 30 by public transport. The distances don't change, but the public transport times are from 2019 and services have been cut since, so read those as the best case. An hour's walk to the doctor means you'll be driving there.
The bus figures are current. The average stop has about 93 scheduled departures on a weekday and about three buses an hour at peak, and 82% of stops have some weekend service. That's a working bus service, but only about 2% of commuters use it, and that says more about where people are going than about how often the buses run.
Road noise needs checking. All of Holbury's postcodes are at or near the 65-decibel level at which official noise mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band mapped reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise doesn't reach that level anywhere. How loud a particular house is depends on how far it sits from the busy road, so check the property itself.
Overall, Holbury's connections are below par. The roads and the fibre work, and without a car the other options run out quickly.