Homerton is well connected, and its residents mostly don't use the train. The station is on the doorstep. The buses run constantly. Most households have no car. On a weekday, the most common way to get to work is not to go.
Homerton station is on the London Overground, with trains west through Dalston Junction towards Richmond and Clapham Junction and east to Stratford, and Hackney Wick, Hackney Central and Hackney Downs stations are all close. At the 2021 Census only about 5% of working residents took the train to work, while about 12% took the bus. The area has 175 bus stops.
The 2021 Census commute figures look different from what the station map suggests. About 46% of working residents worked from home, and those years distorted the figures everywhere, but the habit has deep roots in a place like this. About 10% drove, about 8% walked and about 8% cycled. About 63% of households have no car and only about 5% have two or more. Homerton gets to work on foot, by bike, by bus or without leaving the flat.
The buses are a service, not just stops. The 154 stops with timetable data average about 439 scheduled departures each on a weekday and about 22 in the peak hour, and every one of them has a weekend service. With a bus that often, nobody bothers to learn the timetable.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey-time figures, from 2019, put the nearest town centre about 10 minutes away by car, 13 by public transport, 10 by bike and 16 on foot. The same modelling gives about 5 minutes on foot or by public transport to a GP, against 7 by car. A hospital is about 9 minutes by car and 15 by public transport. A food shop is about 6 minutes' walk or 7 minutes' drive, and a large employment centre is about 8 minutes by car or 12 by public transport. These are area averages, the distances won't have moved, and the public transport times are the ones most likely to have changed since 2019.
The town-centre times show what a car is worth here. Driving saves three minutes over the bus and doesn't beat the bike, so most residents don't bother. Getting across the marshes used to be harder: the first route over them was a stone causeway, found in the 1770s, and it took the place a while to improve on it.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 84% of premises in Homerton, ultrafast about 86% and superfast about 98%, and no premises fall below the legal minimum. Every major mobile network covers the whole area for 4G or 5G. For a place where nearly half the workforce didn't commute, the broadband line matters as much as the train line.
Road noise is the cost of all this. About 83% of Homerton's postcodes are near 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 problem, with about 3% of postcodes near 65 decibels from trains and a loudest band of 70. The mapping can't tell you what a given flat sounds like inside, so stand in the bedroom with the window open on a viewing and listen to which side of the block it faces.
There are 83 public charge points in the area, with 102 connectors between them, and only 2 of them are rapid units. With so few rapid chargers, charging an electric car here is something you plan around overnight, not something you fit into a quick stop.
Homerton is well connected: frequent buses, a station within walking distance and full broadband coverage make a car optional for most people, with the traffic noise as the cost.