Milton Keynes is very well connected, best of all by car and by cable. Gigabit broadband reaches almost every home. A main-line station sits in the middle of the city. About four in ten working residents drive to work, and almost as many work from home. Very few take the train to work.
Milton Keynes Central is the main station, with Bletchley, Wolverton, Fenny Stratford, Bow Brickhill and Woburn Sands around the edges of the city. At the 2021 census only about 1% of working residents took the train to work and about 3% took the bus, even though there are 1,164 bus stops in and around the city. The railway is mostly used for occasional trips and for people coming into the city, while most local commuters stay off it.
The commute is shared between the car and home. About 43% of working residents drove to work at the 2021 census and about 37% mainly worked from home, while about 5% walked and about 2% cycled. About 38% of households had two or more cars and about 17% had none. They live on the same grid and get around it in very different ways.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times, from 2019, put the nearest town centre about 11 minutes away by car, 17 by bike, 21 by public transport and 37 on foot. The walk is the real finding: the grid squares were spread out for wheels, and a walk into the centre takes over half an hour.
Everyday trips follow the same pattern. The same Department for Transport model puts a GP about 8 minutes away by car, 12 by public transport and 14 on foot, and a food shop about 7 minutes by car or 8 on foot. A hospital is about 12 minutes by car and 33 by public transport, and the nearest jobs are about 12 minutes by car and 9 by public transport. These are modelled averages across the area. Distances to a fixed destination stay the same, but the public transport times date from 2019 and services have been cut since, so they are the least reliable figures here.
The buses themselves are a real service. Stops with timetable data average about 46 departures each on a weekday and about 3 in the peak hour, and about 87% have at least some weekend service. Three buses an hour at peak is something you plan your day around, and about 3% of working residents did so to get to work.
Broadband is close to complete. Gigabit-capable and ultrafast connections each reach about 97% of the area, superfast reaches about 99%, and essentially no home falls below the legal minimum, the universal service obligation. Mobile data reaches every postcode, and nearly all of them get a signal from every network.
The road network that makes driving easy also makes noise. About 100% of postcodes are near roads mapped at or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping counts road noise as significant, and the loudest band present is 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate source: about 24% of postcodes are near railway noise at or above 65 decibels, again peaking at 75. Neither figure tells you how a given house sounds with the windows shut, so stand in the garden at rush hour and find out which grid road it backs onto.
For electric cars, there are 192 public charge points in and around the city, with 418 connectors between them, and 69 of those connectors are rapid. Sixty-nine rapid connectors means charging can fit around the shopping trip and need not be planned in advance.
In practice, a typical Milton Keynes commute is a short drive across the grid or no commute at all, with a bus as a workable backup and the train kept for longer trips out of the city.
Connections are one of Milton Keynes's real strengths, and they work best for anyone with a car, a fast broadband line, or both.