Staines is well connected, and most of its residents connect by staying put or by car. There is a station with direct trains to London. Hardly anyone takes the train to work. Broadband is fast almost everywhere. The town's real commute runs down a fibre line or along the road.
Staines Rail Station runs direct trains to London, west towards Reading, and on a branch to Windsor through Datchet, with Egham, Ashford (Surrey) and Wraysbury stations nearby. At the 2021 Census only about 4% of working residents took the train to work, and about 2% took the bus, despite 136 bus stops in and around the town. The line has been there all along. The town decided it had other plans.
The commute that does happen is mostly no commute. About 43% of working residents worked from home at the 2021 Census, a count taken while lockdown rules were still shaping working life, and about 40% drove. About 5% walked and about 2% cycled. About one household in six has no car, while about 40% have two or more, which is the driveway arithmetic of a town that expects to drive.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times, from 2019, put the nearest town centre about 9 minutes away by car, 17 by public transport, 13 by bike and 24 on foot from the typical home in the area. For most people that centre is Staines itself, and a 24-minute walk into your own town is a fair measure of how far the housing spreads.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 85% of premises, ultrafast about 88% and superfast about 97%, and no premises fall below the universal minimum speed. That fibre is what carries the 43% working from home, and it does it better than the train ever carried them.
Mobile coverage is complete: 4G or 5G is available from at least one operator, and from every operator, across 100% of the town's postcodes.
There are 12 public charge points in the area with 26 connectors between them, and none of them are rapid. Charging an electric car here is something to plan overnight on a driveway, and the town's car ownership suggests plenty of people have one.
In practice, the typical Staines working day starts at a desk at home or in a car, and the train is for occasional trips into London.
The same Department for Transport model puts a GP about 9 minutes away by car, 19 on foot and 15 by public transport; a hospital about 16 minutes by car and 35 by public transport; and a food shop about 11 minutes' walk or 8 minutes' drive. Employment centres come out at about 15 minutes by car and 9 by public transport, the one destination where the bus beats the car. These are averages modelled for the area, so the distances hold up well, while the public transport times describe the 2019 timetable and have aged since.
Bus stops here get real service. The average stop sees about 119 scheduled departures on a weekday and about 7 buses an hour at peak, and about 84% of stops have at least some weekend service. Those counts are current. It is a properly running network that only about 2% of commuters used to get to work, which is a choice made in the car park more than a failure at the bus stop.
Road noise is the price of all that access. More than 99% of postcodes in Staines sit near or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road traffic as significant, and the loudest band reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate source, with about 15% of postcodes near the 65-decibel mark and a loudest band of 70. The Romans ran the London to Silchester road across the river here, and the town has lived beside through traffic ever since. Look the specific house up on the government's road-noise map, since almost every postcode qualifies and the loud ones are the ones beside the main roads.
Connectivity is one of the things Staines does well: strong broadband, full mobile coverage and a busy bus network, attached to a railway its residents mostly leave to visitors.