Islington is very well connected, and most of the travelling happens on foot or by bus. Two of the country's biggest rail terminals are at the King's Cross end. A bus comes past most stops every couple of minutes at peak. Seven in ten households have no car and seem fine without one. The weak spot is noise, not getting about.
Highbury & Islington, Essex Road, Canonbury and Caledonian Road & Barnsbury stations serve Islington directly. London Kings Cross and St Pancras International are at the Pentonville end, with Old Street and Moorgate to the south. There are 353 bus stops in and around the area. Even so, at the 2021 census only about 3% of working residents went to work by train and about 9% by bus. Islington has more rail than almost anywhere, and its residents mostly don't use it to get to work.
At the 2021 census, about 58% of Islington's workers were working from home. Of those who travelled, about 9% walked, about 6% cycled and about 6% drove. About 69% of households have no car at all and only about 4% have two or more. With red routes and residents'-only parking on so many streets, keeping one car here is a commitment and keeping two is just stubborn.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey-time statistics put the nearest town centre about 8 minutes away by car, 12 by public transport, 9 by bike and 13 on foot. For most of Islington the town centre is down the road, and the walk is barely longer than the bus. Its estimates put a GP about 6 minutes away whether by car, on foot or by public transport, and a food shop about 4 minutes' walk away. A hospital is about 13 minutes by car and 22 by public transport, and somewhere with a good number of jobs is about 4 minutes by car or 8 by public transport. These are modelled averages from 2019. The distances have not changed since, but bus and train services have, so the public transport times are the least reliable figures in the set.
The buses are frequent as well as plentiful. The stops with timetable data average about 597 departures each on a weekday and about 32 buses an hour at peak, and every one of them has a weekend service. A timetable here is something nobody bothers to read.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 95% of premises, superfast reaches about 99%, and no postcode falls below the legal minimum service. Every postcode gets 4G or 5G from all of the networks. Islington's connection to the internet is as good as its connection to the rest of London.
The noise comes with all that traffic. About 58% of Islington'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 mapped separately, and about 6% of postcodes are near that 65-decibel level from trains, also peaking at 75. If a flat faces a main road or a railway line, visit at rush hour with the windows open and again with them shut, because the noise maps cannot tell you what you will hear inside.
There are 217 public charge points in and around the area, with 294 connectors between them, and 13 of those are rapid chargers. For an electric car owner without a driveway, which is nearly every car owner here, that means planning a charge, not topping up while picking up a pint of milk.
Getting around Islington is one of the best things about living here. It has stations, buses, broadband and short walks to almost everything, and the noise of all that traffic is part of the deal.