Well connected, and a lot of it goes unused. Fast broadband reaches almost every home. Buses come often enough that nobody needs to memorise a timetable. Hardly anyone takes the train to work. Woking has the connections of a commuter hub and the habits of a home office.
For rail, Woking Rail Station sits at the centre, with West Byfleet, Brookwood and Worplesdon stations close by. The town only exists in its current form because of the railway, which makes it slightly awkward that only about 4% of working residents went to work by train at the 2021 census. Buses are no busier: there are 368 stops around the area, but about 1% of workers commuted by bus.
The census shows how Woking gets to work. About 45% of working residents worked from home, 37% drove, about 7% walked and about 2% cycled. The town has a railway everyone praises and a home office most people use instead. Cars are still part of the picture: about 16% of households have no car and about 42% have two or more. The spare room is the commute, and the second car is for everything else.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics are modelled for the area as a whole, not as a route from any particular front door. They put the nearest town centre about 10 minutes away by car, 13 by bike, 16 by public transport and 22 on foot. That's a town where walking into the centre is a pleasant option, not an expedition.
Gigabit broadband reaches about 88% of premises, ultrafast about 90% and superfast about 99%. No premises in the area fall below the legal minimum broadband speed. For a place where so many people work from home, the broadband is doing more work than the railway.
Mobile coverage from at least one operator reaches 100% of the area, and so does coverage from all operators, so the choice of network comes down to price.
There are 13 public charge points in the area with 26 connectors between them, and 1 of them is rapid. With a single rapid charger, charging is something to plan, not something you do while shopping.
In practice, the typical Woking commute is short or doesn't happen at all. Anyone who does have to cross town by car at peak times will find the roads are the weak link. There are few road crossings over the railway in the town centre, and they get congested. The trains are fast. Driving to the station is the slow part.
For everyday trips, the same Department for Transport statistics put a GP about 9 minutes away by car, 16 on foot and 14 by public transport. A food store is about 9 minutes' walk or 7 by car. Employment is about 12 minutes by car and 10 by public transport. Hospital is the long one: about 20 minutes by car and about 50 by public transport. The public transport times date from 2019, and services may have been cut since, so trust the car and walk times more.
Bus service matters more than bus stops, and Woking's stops are well served. Each averages about 34 scheduled departures on a weekday and about 2 in the peak hour, and 73% of stops have some weekend service. Those figures are current, unlike the modelled journey times, and they describe a service you can use, not a pole with a timetable on it.
Road noise is the cost of all this access. Almost every postcode, about 100% of them, is near or above the 65-decibel level at which official mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band recorded is 75 decibels or more. Railway noise is a separate source: about 20% of postcodes are near or above the same 65-decibel threshold for rail, also reaching 75 decibels or more at worst. How loud any given house is depends on the house, so check it in person at rush hour.
Connectivity is one of Woking's strengths, with fast broadband, frequent buses and a station on the doorstep; the weak points are the town-centre roads and a single rapid charger.