London Colney is well connected by car and by cable and patchy by rail. About half its workers drive. About a third work from home. Hardly anyone takes the train. The broadband is excellent, and a car does the rest.
There is no station in the village. The rail stations named around it, Park Street, How Wood, Radlett and St Albans City among them, are a drive or a bus ride away, and only 1% of working residents took the train to work at the 2021 Census. Buses do slightly better: London Colney has 33 bus stops, and 2% of workers commuted by bus. Having four stations within reach and a train share that low means the stations are for days out more than for the commute.
The 2021 Census shows how the village gets to work. About 52% drove, 32% worked from home, 5% walked and 1% cycled. Only about 12% of households have no car, and 45% have two or more. The commute here starts on the driveway.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics model the trip to the nearest town centre at about 13 minutes by car, 21 by bike, 26 by public transport and 52 on foot. Those are modelled averages for the area from 2019. The walk is close to an hour, so in practice the town centre is a drive away.
For everyday errands, the same Department for Transport model puts a GP about 8 minutes away by car, 11 by public transport and 16 on foot, and a food shop about 10 minutes' walk or 7 minutes' drive. Employment centres are about 6 minutes by car and 20 by public transport. A hospital is about 22 minutes by car and 61 by public transport. Those are area averages, and the distances to the buildings won't have changed. The public transport times date from 2019, and some services have been cut since. Without a car, a hospital appointment takes up the whole morning.
The buses are a real service. London Colney's stops average about 44 scheduled departures each on a weekday, with roughly three an hour at peak, and every stop has some weekend service. That is enough to get about without memorising a timetable.
Broadband is London Colney's strongest connection. Gigabit-capable broadband reaches about 95% of premises, superfast about 97%, and no postcode falls below the government's minimum service level. Every postcode gets 4G or 5G from every network, so mobile signal is a non-issue. A third of the workforce never leaves the house, and the fibre is the reason it can.
Road noise affects the whole village. Every postcode in London Colney is near or above 65 decibels on the official noise mapping, the level at which road noise counts as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. That mapping shows the roads near each postcode, and how loud it is inside any one house depends on which way it faces and what the windows are like. Stand in the garden of the house you are thinking of buying at rush hour and listen. A quiet road in London Colney is somewhere you drive to.
Electric car owners have three public charge points with six connectors between them, and one of those is rapid. With a single rapid unit, charging has to be planned around, and you can't count on topping up while doing the shopping.
London Colney is middling for connections: excellent online, easy by car, decent by bus, and let down by the lack of a station of its own.