Slough is very well connected, and most of its commuters use those connections from behind the wheel. Three stations serve the town. Buses run often, including at weekends. Gigabit broadband reaches almost every home. Even so, most commuters still take the car.
Slough Rail Station, Langley (Berks) and Burnham (Berks) put three stations on the main line through the town, and the Elizabeth line serves Slough too. Only about 3% of working residents took the train to work at the 2021 census, and about 4% took the bus, even though the area has 544 bus stops. In 1849 a branch was built from Slough to Windsor & Eton Central for Queen Victoria's convenience, and the rail network has been more popular with visitors than with commuting residents ever since.
Driving is the town's main way to work. About 46% of working residents drove to work at the census, and about 29% worked from home. About 7% walked and about 2% cycled. About 19% of households have no car, while about 39% have two or more. From the mid-17th century, stagecoaches changed horses at Salt Hill on the way out of London, and Slough has been built around road traffic ever since.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey-time statistics for 2019 put the nearest town centre about 11 minutes away by car, 14 by bike, 21 by public transport and 28 on foot. A GP is about 8 minutes by car, 11 by public transport and 12 on foot, and a food store is about 7 minutes by car or 8 on foot. Employment is about 12 minutes by car and about 12 by public transport. A hospital is about 17 minutes by car and about 38 by public transport. These are modelled averages for the area. The distances do not change, but the public transport times date from 2019 and some services have been cut since, so those are the least reliable figures here. Even so, a hospital trip by bus taking more than twice as long as the drive is the clearest finding in the set.
The buses carry more weight than the census commute share suggests. On a weekday, a stop sees about 157 scheduled departures on average, with about 9 buses at the peak hour, and about 95% of stops with service data have at least some weekend service. These are current timetable counts, unlike the 2019 journey times. At that frequency nobody needs a printed timetable, although only about one commuter in twenty-five uses the bus to get to work.
Broadband is excellent. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 95% of premises, ultrafast about 96% and superfast about 99%, and no premises fall below the minimum speed everyone is legally entitled to request. Mobile coverage is complete, with 4G or 5G from at least one operator and from all operators across 100% of the area.
The flip side of all that traffic is noise. More than 99% of postcodes are close to or above 65 decibels of road noise, the level at which official noise mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate source, and about 45% of postcodes are near or above 65 decibels from trains, with that band also reaching 75. Few streets in Slough are far from either a main road or a railway line.
The area has 43 public charge points with 89 connectors between them, 9 of them rapid. With only nine rapid units, most electric car owners will be planning a long charge in advance and not topping up on the way to the shops.
For a typical commute, Slough gives a choice that most towns cannot. A driver is minutes from the motorway network, a rail commuter has three stations to pick from, and someone working from home has gigabit broadband.
Connectivity is one of Slough's real strengths. The price of all those connections is that almost every street hears a road or a railway.