Connected by car, and by almost nothing else. Around six in ten residents drive to work. More than a quarter never leave the house to do it. Half the households run two cars or more. The town has a railway station, a mainline running past it and a bus network with stops on every estate, and the residents have collectively decided none of that is worth the bother.
Ivybridge Rail Station sits on the mainline, and 0.2% of working residents use it to get to work. There are 55 bus stops across the area, and about 2% of working residents commute by bus. A station used by that many people is not a transport link, it is a car park with a platform attached.
The commute mix explains the rest. About 57% drive, roughly 27% work from home, about 8% walk and about 1% cycle. Around 12% of households have no car at all, while about 52% have two or more. That second figure is the town in one number: the standard household solution here is not a better bus, it is another vehicle on the drive.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times put the nearest town centre at about 10 minutes by car and about 23 minutes by public transport. Same destination, more than twice the time, which is the sort of arithmetic that settles an argument before it starts.
Broadband is where the town outperforms everything else about its connectivity. Gigabit-capable service reaches about 86% of premises and superfast about 97%, and nothing at all falls below the universal service obligation. The fibre arrived more reliably than the timetable ever did.
Mobile coverage reaches about 100% of premises from at least one operator and about 91% from all of them, so the only people who will notice a problem are the ones loyal to the wrong network.
Electric vehicles are the awkward gap. The area has one public charge point with three connectors, one of them rapid. In a town where half the households run two or more cars, that is charging as something you plan your week around rather than something you do while buying milk.
Those same modelled statistics put the town centre at about 15 minutes by bicycle and about 30 minutes on foot. They describe the area as a whole rather than a route from any particular front door, so treat them as the shape of the place rather than a promise.
The wider set is more revealing. A doctor's surgery works out at about 14 minutes by car, about 30 by public transport and about 83 minutes on foot, which is not a walk anybody makes twice. A hospital is about 25 minutes by car against about 70 by public transport. A food store is about 21 minutes on foot or about 8 by car. Employment centres come out at about 53 minutes by car and about 27 by public transport, which is the one journey where the train earns its keep. All of these are modelled for the area rather than measured from a doorstep, and the public transport figures date from 2019, so they describe services as they were rather than as they are.
On current bus data, the 54 stops with published service information average about 49 scheduled departures on a weekday and about 3 in the peak hour, and every one of them has some weekend service. That is a genuine network by rural Devon standards. It is also a network that about 2% of commuters use, which tells you the problem is where the buses go rather than how often.
Road noise is the trade-off nobody mentions at the viewing. Every postcode in the area sits near or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels. The trunk road along the southern edge is why the town grew east and west instead of north and south, and it is audible in the price of that convenience. Rail noise, by contrast, registers on none of the town's postcodes.
Connectivity is the weakest thing about this town. The broadband is genuinely good and the road access is the reason anyone commutes from here at all, but a station nobody uses and a bus network nobody rides mean the honest answer is that you will need a car, and probably a second one.