Soho is well connected, mostly because it sits in the middle of the place everyone else is trying to reach. Over half of working residents don't commute at all. One in five walks to work. Hardly anyone drives, and fewer own a car. The trains are a walk away, and most residents don't need them.
Rail here means walking to one of London's terminals, with London Charing Cross and London Euston among them, and at the 2021 census only about 3% of Soho's working residents took the train to work. The buses are better used than that figure suggests: there are 38 bus stops in and around the district, even though only about 3% of residents commuted by bus. For a district this central, the train is something you take to leave London.
The 2021 census shows how Soho gets to work. About 53% of working residents worked from home, about 20% walked, about 4% cycled and about 3% drove. About 82% of households have no car, and only about 3% have two or more. In a district where Henry VIII once kept a royal park, the commute for most residents now runs from the bedroom to the kitchen table.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey-time statistics, from 2019, put the nearest town centre about 9 minutes away by car, 10 by public transport, 8 by bike and 10 on foot. The same 2019 figures put a GP about 13 minutes' walk away, or 13 by public transport and 10 by car. A hospital is about 14 minutes by car and 17 by public transport, and a food shop is a 4-minute walk or 7 minutes by car. To reach the nearest cluster of jobs takes about 17 minutes by car, 6 by public transport and 3 on foot. These are modelled averages for the area. The distances don't change, but the public transport times date from before some services were cut, so they are the shakiest figures here. Even so, the car comes last in its own race.
The buses are the current picture, and they are busy. The stops with timetable information average about 1,020 departures each on a weekday and about 50 in the peak hour. Every one of them has a weekend service. These are counts of departures, not of routes, and at that frequency nobody bothers to check the timetable.
Broadband is close to complete. About 91% of premises can get gigabit broadband, about 92% can get superfast, and none falls below the legal minimum service. Mobile signal from every network reaches the whole area.
The cost of all this is noise. About 97% of postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels of road noise, the level at which official noise mapping treats traffic as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels or more. Rail noise doesn't register. With 669 listed buildings in and around the district, double glazing is not always allowed, so ask what glazing the flat has and whether the listing permits changing it. Few residents drive, but their bedrooms still face the traffic.
Electric vehicles are barely catered for: 17 public charge points with 26 connectors between them, two of them rapid. Charging is something you plan for, which suits the share of residents who never needed a car anyway.
For day-to-day life, almost everything is within reach on foot, by bus or over a broadband line. The one exception is anywhere that needs a car.
Connectivity is a strength here: a district built for walking, wired almost completely and served by buses every few minutes. The only thing it doesn't provide is a quiet street to come home to.