Very well, as long as the bus counts. Trains run to Victoria from a station in the middle of the district. At peak a bus comes past the average stop every few minutes. About four in ten households have no car. Gigabit broadband reaches nearly every door. The railway built this suburb, and today it mostly gets about by bus.
Thornton Heath Rail Station is on the Victoria branch of the Brighton Main Line, with Selhurst the next stop down and Norwood Junction close by. Norbury, East Croydon and West Croydon are also within reach. Even so, only about 10% of working residents took the train to work at the 2021 census, against about 17% on the bus. The area has 206 bus stops, which go a long way to explaining that split.
Commuting in Thornton Heath splits two ways. About 27% of working residents worked from home at the census, and the same share, about 27%, drove. Around 7% walked and about 2% cycled. About 39% of households had no car, and about 19% had two or more. A big minority manage fine without a car, and a smaller group park two of them outside.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times, from 2019, put the nearest town centre about 8 minutes away by car, 14 by public transport, 10 by bike and 16 on foot. Walking to the shops takes not much longer than catching a bus there, and that counts for more than any timetable.
Everyday errands are close. The same Department for Transport model gives about 7 minutes to a GP by car, on foot or by public transport, and a food shop about 6 minutes' walk or 7 by car. A hospital is about 10 minutes by car or 20 by public transport, and the nearest substantial employment about 7 by car or 11 by public transport. These are area averages, and the 2019 public transport times are the least reliable of the set, because routes can be cut while the distances stay the same. A GP the same 7 minutes away by car, on foot and by bus means the surgery is just round the corner.
The bus figures are current. The average stop sees about 404 scheduled departures on a weekday and around 22 an hour at peak. Every one of the 188 stops with timetable data has a weekend service. That counts departures, not routes, and around here a missed bus means a short wait.
Broadband is close to complete. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 95% of premises and superfast about 99%, with nowhere in the district below the universal service minimum. Mobile 4G or 5G from at least one operator covers essentially all of it, and from every operator nearly all of it.
Noise is the cost of all this. Official mapping treats 65 decibels as the point where road noise becomes significant, and about 27% of postcodes here are near or above it, with the loudest band at 75 decibels or more. Rail noise is a separate source and a bigger one, with about 38% of postcodes near or above the same threshold, also reaching 75 decibels. Check how far the house is from the railway, and go back in the evening rush to hear it. The line that turned Thornton Heath into a suburb is now louder than its roads.
The area has 45 public charge points with 93 connectors between them, and 6 of those are rapid units. With so few rapid units, most electric car owners here charge overnight at home or plan their top-ups, because a quick charge during the shopping isn't usually on offer.
Connectivity is one of Thornton Heath's real strengths: a station on the Victoria line out of London, buses at almost every corner, and broadband that reaches nearly every home. The cost is the noise from the railway.