Tooting is well connected, mainly because most things are a short walk or a frequent bus away. At peak times buses arrive every few minutes. About half the households don't own a car. At the last census, more than half of workers mostly worked from home. A hospital visit is the one ordinary trip that takes a while.
The Northern line runs under the High Street, and Tooting railway station has direct trains south to Wimbledon and Sutton and north to Farringdon and St Pancras. Balham and Earlsfield stations are close enough to give most streets a second option. At the 2021 census only about 3% of working residents commuted mainly by train. Tooting has 168 bus stops, and about 6% of working residents took the bus to work.
Working from home was the biggest share by a long way, at about 54% of working residents in the 2021 census. Driving came next at about 10%, then walking at about 8% and cycling at about 4%. About half of households had no car, and about 10% had two or more. For most working residents of Tooting, the commute was no commute at all.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics, modelled for the area, put the nearest town centre about 8 minutes away by car, 9 by bike, 11 by public transport and 13 on foot. Over that distance the car only just beats walking.
The same statistics put a GP about 7 minutes away by car and 8 minutes on foot or by public transport. A food shop is about 5 minutes' walk or 6 minutes' drive. Employment is about 8 minutes by car and 9 by public transport. The hospital is the outlier, at about 10 minutes by car and 19 by public transport. These are modelled averages for the area, and the public transport times are from 2019, so they're the least reliable part of the set, since services have changed since then. The distances themselves don't change.
The current bus timetable is more useful than any of that modelling. Tooting's stops average about 440 scheduled departures each on a weekday, around 24 an hour at the peak, and every stop has some weekend service. With buses that frequent, nobody in Tooting needs to check a timetable.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 93% of premises and superfast about 99%. Every network covers the whole area for 4G and 5G mobile.
Road noise is the cost of all those buses and cars. About 42% of Tooting's postcodes are near or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road traffic as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is separate and smaller, with about 8% of postcodes near or above 65 decibels from trains and a loudest band of 75 as well. If you're viewing a flat that faces a busy road, open the windows during the viewing.
Tooting has 157 public charge points with 204 connectors between them, and 4 of them are rapid chargers. With so few rapid units, an electric car here usually gets charged slowly overnight.
Getting around is one of Tooting's better points, with frequent buses, the Northern line and fast broadband. The main drawbacks are traffic noise and a slow trip to hospital.