Lewisham is very well connected, because one station sends trains into the City and a light railway out towards the Docklands. More than half the households run no car. Every bus stop has a weekend service. Gigabit broadband reaches most homes. Here the car is the optional extra, and most people skip it.
Lewisham station is the hub, with trains into London Cannon Street and London Bridge and out east towards Woolwich Arsenal, plus the light railway heading for the Docklands and the City. Ladywell, Hither Green, St Johns and Blackheath stations are all close at the edges. The area has 158 bus stops. Even so, at the 2021 Census only about 11% of working residents took the train to work and about 9% the bus, which is a modest share for a town built round a junction.
The reason is that about 50% of working residents were working from home that year. Of those still travelling, about 11% drove, 6% walked and 3% cycled. About 54% of households have no car at all, and only about 8% have two or more. Half the town commuted as far as the kitchen table, and the other half had more train lines than it could use.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times put the nearest town centre about 9 minutes away by car, 12 by public transport, 10 by bike and 13 on foot. When walking loses to driving by four minutes, the parking search alone settles it in favour of the shoes.
The same Department for Transport statistics, modelled averages for the area from 2019, put a GP about 6 minutes away on foot or by public transport and 7 by car, a food store about 6 minutes' walk or 7 minutes' drive, and a hospital about 11 minutes by car or 17 by public transport. The nearest large employment centre is about 7 minutes by car and 15 by public transport, but 47 on foot and 4 by bike. Distances to fixed places have not moved since then, while the bus and train times are the least reliable of the set, since services have been cut in places since 2019. On those figures a bike gets to work faster than a car, and about 3% of commuters use one.
The buses themselves are frequent. The 138 stops with timetable data average about 520 scheduled departures each weekday and about 26 in the peak hour, and every one of them has a weekend service. That is a bus network you use without looking at a timetable, which is just as well, because nobody here owns one.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 90% of premises, the same share as ultrafast, and superfast covers about 99%, with no premises left below the legal minimum speed. Mobile coverage is complete, with every network reaching the whole area for 4G or 5G. Half the town working from home has never been short of a signal to do it with.
The busy roads are audible. About 53% of postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels of road noise, the level at which official noise mapping treats it as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is mapped separately, with about 24% of postcodes near or above 65 decibels from the railway and a loudest band of 70. The trains that make Lewisham easy to leave are also the trains a lot of residents hear going past, so stand in the back bedroom of any flat near the line and listen while a few go through.
The area has 55 public charge points with 78 connectors between them, and 5 are rapid units. With rapid chargers that scarce, charging is something you plan, which fits a town where most households have no car to charge.
Connectivity is one of Lewisham's real strengths. A household without a car loses very little here, and one with a car mostly uses it at weekends.