Hornsey is well connected for getting about and lightly used for commuting, because most of its workers stopped commuting. Buses are everywhere. Several rail stations are close. Half the households manage without a car. The traffic noise, meanwhile, reaches almost every postcode, and most of it belongs to people passing through.
Hornsey Rail Station is in the district itself, with Alexandra Palace, Crouch Hill, Harringay, Harringay Green Lanes and Finsbury Park within reach. At the 2021 census, though, only about 3% of working residents took the train to work. Buses carried about 8%, from a network of 949 stops in and around the area.
The bigger story is who travels at all. About 54% of working residents worked from home at that census, which makes it the largest single way Hornsey got to work by a distance. About 10% drove, about 6% walked and about 4% cycled. About half of households own no car, and only about 8% own two or more. For a district with this many stations nearby, the platforms were doing surprisingly little of the work, at least in 2021.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey-time statistics, which date from 2019, put the nearest town centre about 8 minutes away by car, 8 by bike, 10 by public transport and 10 on foot. When walking is as quick as the bus, the town centre is effectively next door. The same statistics put a GP about 7 minutes away by car, on foot or by public transport, and a food shop about 5 minutes' walk or 7 minutes' drive. A hospital is about 14 minutes by car and 26 by public transport, and a major employment centre about 10 minutes by car, 16 by public transport, 5 by bike and 57 on foot. Distances to these places do not change much, but the public transport times come from 2019 and will have aged as services changed, so they are the shakiest numbers in the list.
Today's bus service is the better guide, and it is busy. A typical stop has about 471 scheduled departures on a weekday and about 25 buses in the busiest hour, and about 99% of stops have a weekend service. Nobody here needs to learn a timetable.
Broadband reaches gigabit speeds at about 77% of premises and superfast speeds at about 98%, with no premises below the legal minimum service. Every postcode has 4G or 5G from every network, so the signal is one thing nobody here needs to ask about.
Road noise is the cost of all that movement. About 98% of Hornsey's postcodes are near or above 65 decibels of road noise, the level at which official noise mapping treats traffic as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate source, with about 19% of postcodes near or above the same 65-decibel threshold. In a district where half the households have no car, most of that traffic is somebody else's. Noise maps change a lot between a main road and the street behind it, so check the official road noise map for the exact address alongside the viewing.
There are 635 public charge points in and around the area, with 798 connectors between them, and 27 of them are rapid units. For the minority who drive electric, charging is close to wherever they happen to park.
Hornsey is very well connected in everything but the commute its residents mostly no longer make, with buses that never stop, broadband that mostly flies and a main road nearly everywhere. As places to get around from go, it does well, and the noise is the price of the convenience.