Putney is very well connected, and the buses do more of the work than the trains. There is a station with direct trains into central London. A bus pulls up at the average stop every few minutes at peak. Broadband reaches almost everyone. More than half of working residents were found at the last census making no commute at all.
Putney Rail Station has direct trains into central London, and Barnes Rail Station is a short walk over the western boundary for the streets at that end. Only about 4% of working residents took the train to work at the 2021 census, and about 10% took the bus. The district has 269 bus stops, and the buses carry more than twice as many commuters as the trains, which is the right way round for a place with a stop within sight of most front doors.
The biggest single group at the 2021 census, about 53% of working residents, worked from home. About 12% drove, about 6% walked and about 5% cycled. About four in ten Putney households have no car at all, while about 13% have two or more. The two-car household and the household with none can share a street here, and only one of them spends Sunday looking for a space.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times, calculated for the area in 2019, put the nearest town centre about 10 minutes away by car, 15 by public transport, 12 by bike and 19 on foot. The same statistics put a GP about 8 minutes away by car, 9 by public transport and 10 on foot, a food shop about 6 minutes' walk or 7 minutes' drive, and a centre of employment about 6 minutes by car or 18 by public transport. A hospital is further: about 19 minutes by car and 31 by public transport. Distances to those places have not moved since 2019, though the public transport times are the least dependable of the set, because some services have changed since they were modelled.
The bus figures are current, and they are the strongest part of the picture. The average Putney stop sees about 401 scheduled departures on a weekday and about 21 in the busiest hour, and about 97% of stops have a weekend service. At that frequency the timetable is a formality.
Gigabit-capable broadband reaches about 80% of premises, ultrafast about 86% and superfast about 99%, and no premises fall below the legal minimum broadband speed. Every postcode gets a fast mobile signal from every operator. For the half of the workforce who stay at home, that is the commute.
The price of all that traffic is noise. About 79% of Putney's postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels of road noise, the level at which official noise mapping treats it as significant, and the loudest band in the area reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate source, with about 20% of postcodes near or above 65 decibels from the railway and the loudest band at 70. The government's noise maps show the bands for the exact postcode, and that is worth checking on the street you plan to buy on, because the buses that make Putney easy to leave are the same ones going past the bedroom window.
There are 270 public charge points across the area, with 342 connectors between them, and 6 of them are rapid. With six rapid units, most Putney electric car owners will be charging overnight and planning around it.
For most people in Putney, the commute means a bus, a train or no journey at all, and the car is an optional extra for the weekend. Putney is one of the better-connected parts of south-west London, and its main cost is the traffic you can hear from home.