Roydon is reasonably well connected, provided you have a car. It has its own railway station, but few residents use it to get to work. Driving and working from home cover most commutes. Buses are scarce. Broadband is good, which is just as well, since home is where about four in ten residents work.
Roydon Rail Station is in the village itself, with trains to Stratford and Bishops Stortford. Harlow Town, Broxbourne, Rye House and St Margarets stations are also within reach. Even so, at the 2021 census only about 5% of working residents took the train to work. Buses carried under 1%, and there are just 8 bus stops in the area. Few villages this size have a station of their own, and few use theirs so little.
At that census, about 44% of Roydon's working residents drove to work and about 39% worked from home. Walking accounted for about 4% and cycling about 1%. Car ownership backs this up: only about 9% of households have no car, and about 52% have two or more. The village gets to work by car or doesn't commute at all, and the train comes a distant third.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times put the nearest town centre about 13 minutes away by car and about 23 minutes by public transport.
Broadband is strong. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 81% of the area, as does superfast broadband, and no postcode falls below the universal service minimum. Mobile coverage is near complete, with every postcode getting 4G or 5G from at least one network and about 99% getting it from all of them. For the four in ten who work from home, the connection matters more than the train timetable.
In practice, a typical Roydon commute starts with car keys. The station is a useful extra for the occasional trip, and the bus is something you plan around if you use it at all.
On the same modelled figures, cycling to the nearest town centre takes about 22 minutes and walking about 50. Fifty minutes on foot to the nearest town centre means that walking is out for most trips.
For everyday destinations, the Department for Transport's journey-time statistics put a GP about 12 minutes away by car, 21 by public transport and 43 on foot. A hospital is about 15 minutes by car and 30 by public transport. A food shop is about 10 minutes' walk or 7 minutes' drive, and the nearest employment centre about 8 minutes by car and 11 by public transport. These are modelled averages for the area, dating from 2019. The car and walking times still hold, because the destinations haven't moved, but bus services have been cut since, so the public transport times are the least reliable. A 43-minute walk to the doctor is why so many households here run more than one car.
The current bus timetable is thin. Each of Roydon's stops averages about 8 scheduled departures on a weekday and about half a bus in the peak hour. Every stop does get some weekend service. Eight departures a day is a timetable you plan your day around, not one you can turn up for.
Noise is the other cost of being well connected. Road noise is significant once it reaches 65 decibels on the official noise maps, and every postcode in Roydon is at or near that level, with the loudest band reaching 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate measure: about 90% of postcodes are at or near the same threshold from trains, again peaking at 75 decibels. The railway that gives Roydon its station also puts most of the village near the noise threshold for rail. These are area-wide maps, so it pays to stand in the garden of any house you are considering while a train goes past.
Roydon's connections are middling. They are good by car or broadband, and patchy for anyone relying on buses.