Mill Hill is well connected for a London suburb, though hardly anyone uses the connections to get to work. There is a station on the Broadway and buses at almost every corner. Half the working population stayed home at the last census. The ones who left mostly drove. The real infrastructure here is a broadband line and a busy main road.
Mill Hill Broadway station puts the area on a direct rail line into London, with Hendon and Elstree & Borehamwood stations a short hop either side. Only about 3% of working residents took the train to work at the 2021 census, though, and about 6% the bus, from an area with 189 bus stops. The station has been there since 1868, and the commuters have been finding other arrangements for a while.
The census commute mix tells the story the station can't. About 47% of working residents worked from home, about 28% drove, about 4% walked and about 1% cycled. About a fifth of households have no car, and about 34% have two or more. Mill Hill was built for the railway and filled up with people who drive past the station.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey-time statistics put the nearest town centre about 9 minutes away by car, 14 by public transport, 11 by bike and 18 on foot. Those are averages for the area as a whole, modelled from 2019. An 18-minute walk to the shops is a London suburb doing its job.
The same statistics cover the trips that fill a normal week, and they come with two warnings: they are area averages from a model, and the public transport times date from 2019, so they have aged worse than the car and walking times as services have changed. On that basis a GP is about 8 minutes by car, 11 by public transport and 13 on foot, and a food store about 8 minutes by car or 11 walking. A hospital is about 21 minutes by car and 34 by public transport, and on foot it is over an hour, which is the one trip here that needs planning. A sizeable cluster of jobs is about 9 minutes by car and 23 by public transport.
The buses are better than the commuting share suggests. Each stop averages about 290 scheduled departures on a weekday and about 17 at the peak hour, and every stop in the area has some weekend service. These are current timetables, unlike the modelled journey times, and a peak-hour bus every few minutes is a proper service by any standard.
Broadband is good and patchy at the top end. Superfast speeds reach about 99% of premises, and gigabit-capable connections about 72%, with no premises falling below the basic legal minimum. Mobile signal from at least one network, and from every network, covers the whole area. With nearly half the workforce at home, the gigabit gap is the commute that matters, and checking whether a particular address has a gigabit connection is the one thing worth confirming early.
Road noise is the price of all those buses and drivers. More than 99% of postcodes are near or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road traffic as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels or more. Rail noise is a separate source, reaching that threshold in about 32% of postcodes, also topping out at 75 decibels. The line that never made it to Edgware was abandoned in 1950, and most of its track bed is now a footpath, which is the quietest transport scheme Mill Hill has ever had.
Electric vehicle drivers have 38 public charge points in the area with 55 connectors between them, and 2 of those are rapid. With that few rapid units, charging is something you plan at home, with very little top-up while doing the shopping.
Mill Hill is better connected than the commuting habits suggest: the buses are frequent, the broadband is mostly good and the town centre is close by car, but the trains go largely unused and the roads bring their noise with them.