Connectivity in Shoreham is what happens when a coastal town gets gigabit broadband before it gets a proper commuter railway upgrade. Nine in ten homes can now get gigabit broadband. Nearly four in ten residents work from home. Only about two in a hundred residents commute by train. The infrastructure is present but the commute has quietly reorganised around not needing it, which is the honest lead.
On rail, Shoreham-by-Sea station serves the centre, with direct trains east to Brighton and west to Portsmouth. Neighbouring stations at East Worthing, Lancing, Southwick, Portslade, Fishersgate, and Aldrington sit on the same coastal line and thicken the local coverage nicely on paper. Even so, only about two in a hundred residents use the train for the journey to work. The buyers who arrived assuming they would commute on it are the ones who reported back that the timetable and the working day did not line up as neatly as the map suggested. On buses, the picture is denser. Roughly one hundred and fifty bus stops sit inside the town's boundary, which is generous coverage for a coastal town of this size, though most Shoreham residents will admit they use them less than they said they would when they moved in. Close to three in a hundred residents commute by bus, so the network is used, if not heavily.
Broadband is where Shoreham quietly outperforms its transport picture. The gigabit-capable share of Shoreham addresses sits at about nine in ten, and nearly all can get superfast broadband on the standard definition. No postcode sits below the universal-service threshold, which means a household that cannot get a workable connection does not exist here in any meaningful number. That is the infrastructure most residents use for the journey to work, and it is what turns nearly four in ten of them into people who do not need to leave the postcode by 8am. It is also what makes Shoreham a plausible choice for the professional buyer who spent the last five years discovering that they do not enjoy the commute they arranged their life around.
For getting about the town itself, the numbers land at roughly fifteen minutes to the centre by public transport, under ten by car, about eleven or twelve by bike, and about twenty on foot. That is a walkable footprint. For the wider commute, over four in ten residents drive to work, close to seven percent walk, and roughly three percent each take the bus or the bike. Which is another way of saying that the daily journey most Shoreham residents make is a short one, from the front door to the kitchen where the laptop sits. What all of this adds up to is a place where the transport works for the people who need it and where the broadband is doing the heavy lifting for everyone else.
Above-average on the connectivity picture, which is the honest verdict. The rail runs, the buses run more, and the broadband makes both of them optional for a decent slice of the town. It is not a London-commuter town where the train timetable rules the day.