Southwark is very well connected, and most people who live here barely use the connections. There are mainline termini on the doorstep. The average bus stop sees about 35 buses an hour at peak. Seven in ten households have no car. About half the workforce worked from home. Everything is close enough that the transport mostly serves other people.
London Bridge, London Waterloo, London Waterloo East, London Blackfriars and Elephant & Castle stations are all on or near the district's edges, with London Cannon Street and London Charing Cross just across the river. At the 2021 Census, about 3% of working residents took the train to work and about 12% took the bus. There are 450 bus stops in and around the area. Most of the trains here bring commuters in from somewhere else.
Working from home is the biggest commute share by a distance, at about 52% of working residents at the 2021 Census, which was taken during the pandemic. Of those who went in, about 11% walked, about 6% drove and about 5% cycled. About 71% of households have no car, and only about 4% run more than one.
On the Department for Transport's modelled journey-time statistics, the nearest town centre is about 11 minutes by car, 12 by bike, 18 by public transport and 22 on foot. A 22-minute walk to a town centre, in a district much of London treats as the centre, is the kind of result only a national model could produce.
Daily errands are quick. The same Department for Transport model puts a GP about 7 minutes away whether you walk, drive or take public transport. A food shop is about 4 minutes on foot and 6 by car, a hospital about 10 minutes by car and 17 by public transport, and the nearest employment centre about 2 minutes by car and 7 by public transport. These are modelled averages for the area. The public-transport times date from 2019, so they are the most likely to have aged, while the walking and driving times hold up better because the distances haven't changed.
The bus figures are current. The 347 stops with timetable data average about 660 scheduled departures each on a weekday and about 35 an hour at peak, and about 98% of them have a weekend service. A stop here is a queue that keeps moving.
Gigabit-capable broadband reaches about 86% of premises and superfast about 94%, and no premises fall below the legal minimum broadband speed. Every network gives 4G or 5G coverage across the area.
All this comes at a cost to quiet. About 92% 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. Rail noise is a separate and much smaller problem, with about 3% of postcodes near 65 decibels, although the loudest of them also reach 75. On any flat you're considering, find out which way the bedroom faces, because the same building can have a road side and a quiet side.
There are 547 public charge points in and around the area, with 614 connectors between them, and 18 of those connectors are rapid. That's hundreds of charge points in a district where most households have no car to plug in.
Getting around is the easy part of living in Southwark. The harder part is the traffic noise that comes with it.