Potters Bar is well connected, mainly by car and by cable. It has a main-line station and the motorway on its doorstep. Hardly anyone took the train to work. Four in ten drove, and nearly as many never left the house. The broadband reaches every home, and only the buses and the train share are less impressive than they first sound.
Potters Bar station is on the East Coast Main Line, with Brookmans Park and Hadley Wood stations close by. Yet at the 2021 census only about 4% of working residents took the train to work, and about 2% took the bus, despite 99 bus stops across the area. The trains carry more of the town's reputation than its residents.
The commute mix at that census tells the town's story better than the timetable does. About 42% of working residents drove to work and about 38% worked from home. About 6% walked and under 1% cycled. Car ownership matches, with about 43% of households running two or more cars and about 16% running none. Potters Bar grew up on the Great North Road, and it never stopped preferring the road.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times for the area put the nearest town centre about 9 minutes away by car, 12 by public transport, 11 by bike and 17 on foot. For a commuter town, that is a short trip whichever way you make it.
The same Department for Transport statistics, modelled averages whose public transport times date from 2019 and will have aged as services have been cut since, put a GP about 9 minutes away by car, 14 by public transport and 18 on foot. A hospital is about 17 minutes by car and 34 by public transport. A food shop is about 12 minutes' walk or 7 minutes' drive, and employment is about 11 minutes by car or 22 by public transport. The hospital trip is the one where leaving the car at home really costs you.
The buses are better than the commuting share makes them look. Stops in the area average about 59 scheduled departures each on a weekday and about 4 an hour at the peak, and about 94% of stops have some weekend service. That is a working bus network that most residents choose to drive past.
Broadband is the best of it. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 92% of premises and superfast broadband reaches all of them, with no premises left below the legal minimum service. Coverage from 4G and 5G mobile networks covers the whole area on every operator. Potters Bar is better wired to the internet than to its own bus stops.
Road noise is close to universal. About 100% of postcodes in the area sit near or above 65 decibels from road traffic, the level at which official noise mapping treats it as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate source and affects about 13% of postcodes at that level, also peaking at 75 decibels. The official noise map shows which band each home falls in, and anyone viewing a house within earshot of the motorway or the railway should look up its band and then listen to the garden on a weekday morning.
The area has 4 public charge points with 5 connectors between them, and 1 of those is rapid. With a single rapid unit, charging an electric car here is something to plan around the driveway, and most of the town's drivers will be doing it at home.
Potters Bar is better connected than most commuter towns its size, with a main-line station, a short drive to most things and broadband reaching every door, though the car does most of the work and the noise comes with the roads.