Badly, and the town has arranged its life accordingly. Barely anyone commutes by train or bus. Nearly half drive, almost a fifth walk to work, and well over a quarter never leave the house to do it. The branch line is a lovely thing to have and almost nobody uses it to earn a living. Looe is not connected so much as self-contained, which is a different quality and worth knowing before you buy.
Looe Rail Station sits in the town, with Sandplace and Causeland further up the same single-track line. Under 1% of working residents commute by train, which tells you what the line is actually for. There are 27 bus stops across the area, and under 1% of residents commute by bus. Neither of those numbers is a complaint about the services themselves. They are what happens when a town's working population mostly does not travel to an office at all.
The commute mix explains the place better than the transport list does. Around 47% of working residents drive, 28% work from home, and 17% walk. Cycling accounts for under 1%, which in a town of gradients is not a surprise. On cars, 19% of households have none at all and 35% have two or more, so the town splits between people who can walk to everything and people running a vehicle each. There is not much of a middle.
For the nearest town centre, the Department for Transport's modelled journey times put it at roughly 11 minutes by car, 22 minutes on public transport, 17 minutes by bike and 39 minutes on foot. That walking figure is the finding rather than a footnote: the nearest town centre is well over half an hour away on your own legs, so anyone imagining a stroll into town for a proper shop should adjust. These are modelled figures for the area rather than a route from any particular front door.
On broadband, the split is stark. Superfast reaches 97% of premises, so almost everyone can get a working connection, but only 23% can get gigabit and the ultrafast figure is the same 23%. No premises fall below the universal service obligation. For a town where more than a quarter of the workforce works from home, the gap between a decent connection and a genuinely fast one is the difference between a video call and an argument with a video call.
Mobile is the better story. Coverage from at least one operator reaches essentially every premises in the area, and 95% are covered by all operators, which for the far south west is comfortably above what you might fear.
Electric charging is where the infrastructure runs thin. The area has 2 public charge points with 4 connectors between them, of which 1 is rapid. That makes charging something you plan around rather than something you do while buying milk, and anyone arriving with an electric car and no driveway should think hard about where the electricity is coming from.
For everyday destinations, the same modelled statistics put a general practitioner at around 10 minutes by car, 19 minutes on public transport and 37 minutes walking. A food store is 9 minutes by car or 24 on foot. Employment centres run to 71 minutes by car and 55 by public transport. The hospital is the number that should shape your decision: 50 minutes by car, and 107 minutes on public transport. Those public transport figures date from 2019 and services have been withdrawn across rural Cornwall since, so treat them as optimistic. The car and walking times have aged far better.
The bus network, measured properly, is better than the commuting share suggests. Across the stops with published service data, there are around 45 scheduled departures per stop on a weekday, just over 2 buses at peak hour, and 78% of stops have some weekend service. That is a real service by rural Cornish standards. It is still not a network you would organise a job around.
Road noise barely registers. Under 1% of postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road traffic as significant, and 65 decibels is the loudest band present. No postcodes are affected by rail noise at all. Whatever keeps you awake here, it will not be traffic.
Connectivity is the weakest thing about Looe by a distance. The town works beautifully if your work comes down a broadband line or your journeys end within walking distance, and it becomes a daily negotiation the moment either of those stops being true.