Lee is very well connected. It has its own station, with others close by. The average bus stop sees well over two hundred departures on a weekday. Nearly every home can get gigabit broadband. A third of households get by without a car.
Lee station runs trains to Charing Cross, and to Cannon Street via Lewisham, and out the other way towards Woolwich Arsenal and Gravesend. Hither Green and Grove Park stations serve the streets at either end of the area, and Lewisham and Blackheath stations are close as well. At the 2021 census, 11% of working residents took the train to work and about 10% took the bus, using the 212 bus stops in the area. Lee was part of Kent until 1889, and the line from Lee station still runs out to Gravesend as though it never heard.
The biggest group in the 2021 census commute did not commute at all, with 43% of working residents working from home. Next came driving at 21%, then train and bus. About 5% walked to work and 2% cycled. About 35% of households own no car, and about 18% own two or more. In Lee, the train and the bus between them carry about as many commuters as the car does, and a third of households have no car to choose.
Buses here run all day. Across the 192 stops with timetable data, the average stop has 274 scheduled departures on a weekday and about 15 in the peak hour, and 97% of stops have some service at weekends. Those counts come from the current timetable data, so they are more up to date than the journey times below.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics model the trip to the nearest town centre at about 10 minutes by car, 15 by public transport, 12 by bike and 22 on foot. These are modelled averages for the area, worked out from 2019 services. A GP is about 8 minutes away by car, 15 on foot and 14 by public transport. A hospital is about 15 minutes by car and 31 by public transport. A food shop is about 6 minutes' walk or 7 minutes by car, and the nearest large employment centre about 5 minutes by car or 14 by public transport. The distances will not have changed since 2019, but bus services have been cut since the public transport times were modelled, so those are the figures to trust least. The hospital trip is the one where not having a car costs you real time.
Gigabit broadband reaches 88% of premises in Lee and ultrafast 90%, and superfast is available everywhere. Every postcode has 4G or 5G from every operator, so signal will not decide which house to buy.
The area has 27 public charge points with 39 connectors between them, and 5 of those are rapid units. With 5 rapid points, charging is mostly something to plan around your own driveway, if you have one.
Traffic noise is the cost of all that connection. About 80% of Lee's postcodes are near or above 65 decibels of road noise, the level at which official noise mapping treats it as significant, and the loudest band in the area reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate source: about 28% of postcodes are near or above 65 decibels from the railway, peaking at 70 decibels. Visit a property at the morning rush with the windows open, because the noise map cannot tell you what a particular bedroom will hear. The Old Tiger's Head was a mail and coaching inn, so traffic at the crossroads has had about two centuries' start on the current residents.
Connectivity is one of Lee's real strengths. You can live here comfortably without a car, and the buses are frequent enough that many residents never check a timetable.