Woolwich is one of the best-connected places in south-east London. It has its own station on the Elizabeth line. Two mainline stations serve the town centre. Buses come every couple of minutes at the peak. About half of households get by without a car, and the timetable explains why.
Woolwich Arsenal is the main hub, with trains into central London and a Docklands Light Railway branch to Bank and Stratford International. Woolwich Dockyard is one stop along the same line towards Charlton, and Plumstead is next stop east. Since 2022 the Elizabeth line has run from Woolwich to Canary Wharf, central London and Heathrow, and a free ferry and a foot tunnel cross the river to North Woolwich. At the 2021 Census about 9% of workers took the train to work. The bus took more, about 15%, and the area has 278 bus stops. Woolwich spent decades as the place whose Thames crossing was a boat, and it now has a direct train to Heathrow.
The Census commute mix shows how people here actually get to work. About a third of workers, 33%, worked from home. About 20% drove, 15% took the bus, 9% the train and 6% walked. About half of households, 48%, have no car, and only about 12% have two or more. The trains and buses get the attention, but the car is what most households here have done without.
Bus service is more than a count of stops. The stops with timetable data average about 440 scheduled departures each on a weekday, with about 23 buses an hour at the peak, and 99% of them have some weekend service. Those are current timetables. A stop here is a service, not just a sign on a pole.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics are modelled averages for the area, and the public transport figures date from 2019, so they are the least reliable of the set because services have changed since. On those figures, the nearest town centre is about 10 minutes away by car, 17 by public transport, 12 by bike and 21 on foot. A GP is about 7 minutes away by car, on foot or by public transport. A food store is about 6 minutes' walk or 7 minutes' drive. A hospital is about 12 minutes by car or 22 by public transport, and the nearest employment centre about 8 minutes by car or 9 by public transport. The distances to these places don't change, but the bus routes behind those public transport times may have.
Broadband is close to universal. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 91% of premises, ultrafast about 92% and superfast about 99%, and no premises fall below the minimum legal standard. Every major mobile network covers the whole area for 4G or 5G.
Woolwich has 40 public charging points with 87 connectors, 4 of which are rapid. With only 4 rapid units, most electric car owners here will be planning their charging, not doing it while they shop. In a town where half the households have no car, nobody seems to be in much of a hurry to fix that.
Living this close to transport means living close to traffic. About 96% of postcodes are near or above 65 decibels of road noise, the level at which official noise mapping treats road traffic as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. Rail is a separate source, and about 3% of postcodes are near 65 decibels from trains, peaking at 70. If you are viewing a flat facing one of the main roads, go back at rush hour and listen from the bedroom.
On a typical commute you walk to a station or a stop that has a train or bus coming soon, and you reach central London or Canary Wharf without needing a car or a timetable. Connections are one of Woolwich's real strengths, and the price is the traffic that comes with being a crossroads.