Well enough by road and by broadband, and a good deal less by train than the station suggests. More than half the working residents worked from home at the last census. About a third drove. Almost nobody took the train. Wokingham's real commute runs through the router.
Wokingham Rail Station sits in the middle of town, with Winnersh, Winnersh Triangle, Earley, Crowthorne and Bracknell stations all within reach. At the 2021 census only about 2% of working residents commuted by train, which is a modest return on a town with a station of its own. Buses fare worse: there are 195 bus stops in the area, and about 1% of workers used a bus to get to work.
The way Wokingham gets to work is mostly by not going. At the 2021 census about 54% of working residents worked from home, about 35% drove, about 5% walked and about 1% cycled. The car is still the default for everything else: only about 10% of households have no car, and about 53% have two or more. A typical commute here means a laptop on weekdays and a second car on the drive for the days the office insists.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times, from 2019 and averaged across the area rather than routed from any particular door, put the nearest town centre about 11 minutes away by car and about 19 minutes by public transport.
Broadband is the strongest link the town has. Gigabit-capable connections are available to about 91% of the area, and superfast broadband to about 99%. For a place where most of the workforce stays home, that is the infrastructure doing the commuting.
Mobile coverage is complete: about 100% of the area gets 4G or 5G from at least one operator, and about 100% from all of them. Nobody here has to stand by the window to take a call.
Those same modelled figures put the town centre about 14 minutes away by bike and about 30 minutes on foot. Half an hour to walk into the middle of a market town is the honest measure of how far the post-war estates spread.
For everyday destinations, the Department for Transport's statistics put a GP about 9 minutes away by car, about 17 minutes on foot and about 15 by public transport. A food store is about 11 minutes' walk or about 7 minutes' drive. A hospital is about 27 minutes by car and about 50 minutes by public transport, which is a long time to spend on a bus with a sprained wrist. Employment centres come out at about 19 minutes by car and about 12 by public transport, one of the rare cases where the bus beats the car on paper. The public transport times date from 2019 and services have been cut in places since, so treat them with more caution than the car and walking times.
The buses that do run are a usable service rather than a token one. Stops average about 36 scheduled departures on a weekday, about 2 an hour at peak, and about 87% of stops have some weekend service. Two buses an hour will not change anyone's life, but it does mean a stop is a place where a bus eventually turns up.
Road noise is close to universal. About 100% of postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road traffic as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise is a separate source: about 39% of postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels from the railway, with the loudest rail band at 65. For a town that works from home, that is the soundtrack to the working day, though how loud it is inside any one house depends on the house.
There are 24 public charge points in the area with 40 connectors between them, 7 of them rapid. With that few rapid units, charging an electric car here is still something most owners plan around a home charger rather than squeeze in while buying groceries.
Wokingham is better connected than average, carried by excellent broadband and a short drive to most things, with trains and buses that exist more comfortably on the map than in anyone's daily routine.