Nazeing is well connected by broadband and by car, and badly connected by almost everything else. Most working residents drive, and nearly a third work from home. Hardly anyone takes the train, and nobody counted takes the bus. The fibre reaches nearly every door, while the railway stays a drive away.
Rail means getting to a station first. Broxbourne, Roydon, Rye House, Cheshunt, Harlow Town and St Margarets are the stations within reach, none of them in the village itself, and at the 2021 census only about 3% of working residents took the train to work. Twelve bus stops serve the village and its surroundings, and the share of residents commuting by bus rounded to zero.
The census commute shows how the village really moves. About 54% of working residents drove to work and about 31% worked from home. Walking accounted for about 3% and cycling for less than 1%. Only about 5% of households have no car, while about 66% have two or more. In Nazeing, a household with a single car is the minority arrangement.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times, calculated in 2019, put the nearest town centre about 13 minutes away by car, 21 by public transport, 25 by bike and 62 on foot. An hour's walk to the shops is the finding, and the bus figure is the one most likely to have got worse since those times were modelled.
Broadband is the part that works. About 89% of premises can get gigabit speeds and about 90% superfast, and no premises fall below the minimum service the law guarantees. Mobile coverage is complete, with some 4G or 5G signal everywhere and every network available almost everywhere. The third of the workforce at home are better served than the share on the road.
For a typical commute that means a car to work or a car to a station, with the home office as the main alternative. Anyone planning a life on the trains should count the drive to the platform as part of the journey.
The same Department for Transport statistics give the trips that fill a week, modelled on the 2019 network and averaged across the area, with the public transport times the least dependable because services have been cut since. A GP is about 11 minutes by car, 20 by public transport and 42 on foot. A hospital is about 17 minutes by car and 35 by public transport. A food store is about 11 minutes by car and 44 on foot. Employment comes out at about 30 minutes by car and 16 by public transport, the one trip in the table where the model has the bus ahead. A walk of over 40 minutes to buy milk is the everyday reality behind those multi-car households.
The buses themselves are current. Each of the 12 stops averages about 17 departures on a weekday, around one an hour at peak, and every stop has some weekend service. That is a real service, if a thin one, and a commuter who misses one bus waits an hour for the next.
Road noise reaches further than the fields suggest. Every one of Nazeing's postcodes is 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. Rail noise registers at none of them. The mapping covers postcodes, so a visit during the morning rush is the simplest way to hear what the figure means for a particular house. For a village sold on its green fields, the traffic noise is the surprise.
Nazeing is middling for connections: good broadband and short drives, with a railway and a bus service that most residents leave to someone else.