Teddington is well connected for a suburb, and better connected on fibre than on rails. It has a station in the middle of town and three more within reach. Buses run often enough that the timetable stays in the drawer. Most homes can get gigabit broadband. On census day, more people worked from the kitchen table than from every kind of commute put together.
Teddington station is at the centre of town, on a line with direct trains to London Waterloo, and Hampton Wick, Strawberry Hill and Fulwell stations are all close. Kingston, Twickenham and Richmond (London) stations are a bus ride away. Even so, the 2021 census found only about 5% of working residents commuting by train. The national public transport access-node data counts 75 bus stops in and around Teddington, and about 4% of workers used the bus. The town grew around the railway after 1863, and these days the railway has to compete for its customers.
Working from home dominated the census figures, at about 61% of working residents. That count was taken in March 2021 during lockdown, so it overstates working from home today, though not by enough to change the order. About 17% drove to work, 6% walked and 4% cycled. About 23% of households have no car and about 24% have two or more. The car-free flat near the station and the two-car semi by the park live in the same town and cover a different amount of it each weekend.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics, modelled for the area in 2019, put the nearest town centre about 8 minutes away by car, 11 by public transport, 10 by bike and 13 on foot. A GP is about 7 minutes by car, 9 on foot and 9 by public transport. A food store is about 6 minutes' walk or 7 minutes' drive, and a hub of jobs is about 7 minutes by car or 11 by public transport. The nearest hospital is the outlier, at about 16 minutes by car and 32 by public transport. Distances to those places do not move, but the public transport times are from 2019 and services have been cut since, so they are the least reliable figures in this paragraph.
Bus stops are only worth what stops at them. Of the 67 stops with timetable data, the average sees 288 scheduled departures on a weekday and about 15 in the peak hour, and 66 of them have a weekend service. Those counts come from the current timetables, so they are more up to date than the modelled journey times. A stop with that many departures is a service you can turn up and use.
Broadband is where Teddington scores best. Gigabit-capable broadband reaches about 88% of premises, ultrafast about 89% and superfast about 99%, and every postcode has 4G or 5G from every operator. Ask the seller for the broadband provider and speed actually connected, because availability on a map only tells you what you could order.
Road noise is the price of being this well joined up. On the official noise mapping, which treats 65 decibels as the level where road noise becomes significant, almost every postcode in Teddington, about 100%, is near that threshold somewhere, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is mapped separately, and about 44% of postcodes are near the 65-decibel line, with a top band of 65 decibels. Nearly half the town can hear the trains that one worker in twenty used to commute. How loud that sounds indoors depends on the house, the glazing and which side the bedroom faces.
Teddington has 44 public charge points with 45 connectors between them, and none of them is rapid. Charging is therefore an overnight job, or something you schedule into the week, and nobody will be doing it while they nip into the shops.
Getting around is above average without being one of Teddington's strongest points: the fibre and the bus timetable do their job, the train serves fewer people than the station's place in town history suggests, and the hospital trip is the one that needs a car.