Tonbridge - Transport

Transport

Tonbridge railway station is one of Kent's busiest with 3.8 million passengers using it each year. It is an important railway junction with lines to London, Ashford, Hastings and Redhill. The town is also served by the A21 trunk road between London and Hastings and the A26 between Maidstone and Brighton. It is also close to the M25 motorway.

Tonbridge is served by numerous bus routes, most of which are run by Arriva Southern Counties. The main routes are:

• 402 to Tunbridge Wells, Sevenoaks and Bromley
• 7 and 77 to Tunbridge Wells, Hadlow, West Malling and Maidstone
• 147 to Tunbridge Wells, Willow Lea, and Hadlow
• 218 and 219: run between the town centre, Willow Lea and Cage Green

There are future proposals to dual the A21 from Castle Hill to Pembury, where a new regional hospital opened in 2011.

In the years before World War I, an attempt was made by aviation pioneers Frank Gooden and Richard Johnson to establish an airfield to the north of Tonbridge at Cage Green. The airfield was located at Cage Green Fields, at the top of the ridge which The Ridgeway runs up, and east of Shipbourne Road. An accident is recorded as having occurred on 24 December 1913 at the airfield, although neither of Gooden or Johnson was injured. The scheme was ended by the outbreak of war. | c.1914.