Well enough that a third of households have decided a car is optional. Almost nobody here commutes by train. Nearly a third work from home. Walking beats every other way of getting to a job except driving, and driving barely wins. This is a place connected to itself rather than to anywhere else, and most of the people living here chose it on exactly that basis.
On rail, Southsea has no station of its own, and the mainline is borrowed from the wider city. Portsmouth & Southsea Rail Station and Fratton Rail Station are the useful ones, with Portsmouth Harbour Rail Station, Hilsea Rail Station and Cosham Rail Station further along, and Southsea Hoverport handling the Isle of Wight crossing. About 3% of working residents commute by train, which tells you how little the railway features in daily life here. Buses do far more of the work: 233 stops sit inside the area, and about 5% of residents commute by bus.
The commute mix is the argument the transport list cannot make on its own. About 30% work from home, about 35% drive, about 14% walk and about 6% cycle. Around 33% of households have no car at all, while about 22% run two or more. Two very different households live on the same street here, and the one without the car is not the one struggling.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey-time statistics, which describe the area rather than any particular front door, put the nearest town centre at about 8 minutes by car against about 14 minutes on public transport. By bike it is about 11 minutes and on foot about 17. The gap between the car and the bus is small enough that the bus wins the moment parking enters the calculation.
Broadband is close to comprehensively solved. Gigabit service reaches about 94% of premises, superfast about 99%, and no premises at all sit below the universal service obligation. Mobile coverage from at least one operator reaches every part of the area, and so does coverage from all operators, which is rarer than it sounds.
Everyday destinations sit close. On the same modelled statistics, a general practice is about 7 minutes by car, about 12 minutes' walk and about 12 minutes on public transport. A food store is about 4 minutes' walk, which is the number that quietly explains the car-free third. Employment centres come in at about 4 minutes by car and about 13 minutes on public transport, though the walk is about 44 minutes, so working locally does not mean working within strolling distance. A hospital is the outlier: about 20 minutes by car, about 43 minutes on public transport, and about 96 minutes on foot. That last figure is not a route anyone takes, it is the honest measure of how far the hospital actually is. One caveat on all of these: the public transport times date from 2019 and services have been withdrawn in places since, so treat them with more caution than the car and walking figures, which age far better.
The bus numbers are current and they are the ones that matter. Across the 209 stops carrying service data, the average stop sees around 518 scheduled departures on a weekday and about 30 buses an hour at peak, and every single one of those stops has some weekend service. That is a network, not a timetable to memorise.
Noise is the price of the density. Every postcode in the area sits near or above the 65-decibel threshold at which official mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate matter and a much smaller one, affecting about 5% of postcodes near that same threshold. How loud any particular house is depends on which side of which road it sits on, which no map can tell you.
For electric vehicles the provision is thin. There are 68 public charge points in the area offering 75 connections between them, and just one of those is rapid. Charging here is something you plan around overnight rather than something you do while picking up shopping.
Connectivity is a genuine strength locally and an ordinary proposition beyond that. Southsea works beautifully if your life happens inside it, and asks you to make peace with the railway if it does not.