Not well, unless you drive. The town lost both its railway stations to the Beeching cuts and never got either one back. Buses run, and almost nobody catches one to work. Six in ten drive. The broadband is better than the transport, which tells you which century the town has managed to keep up with.
There is no railway station in the town, and the commuting figures reflect it: about one resident in a thousand travels to work by train, and about 1% by bus. That is not for want of somewhere to catch one. There are 46 bus stops across the area, which is a generous number of places to stand and wait for a service most people have already decided against.
The way people actually travel is unambiguous. About 59% drive to work, about 20% work from home, about 13% walk and about 1% cycle. About 44% of households keep two or more cars and about 14% have none. A town where nearly half of households run a second vehicle has already made its peace with the missing railway.
On the Department for Transport's modelled journey times, which describe the area rather than any particular front door, the nearest town centre is about 8 minutes by car, about 11 by bike, about 12 by public transport and about 13 on foot. When the bus and the walk finish within a minute of each other, the bus is not really transport. It is company.
Broadband is the part that quietly works. About 98% of premises can get superfast, about 78% ultrafast and about 72% gigabit, which for a town of this size and this age of housing is a better result than the roads manage.
Mobile coverage reaches about 100% of premises from at least one operator and about 97% from all operators, so the phone works regardless of who sold it to you.
For everyday destinations, the same modelled figures put a doctor's surgery at about 7 minutes by car, about 9 on foot and about 8 by public transport, and a food store at about 7 minutes by car and about 9 on foot. Employment centres come in at about 8 minutes by car and about 39 by public transport. A hospital is the outlier at about 41 minutes by car and about 112 by public transport. Those public transport figures were modelled in 2019 and services have been withdrawn since, so read them as the optimistic version. The car and walk times have aged better, because roads stay where you left them.
The buses themselves hold up better than the commuting share implies, if not by a great deal. Across the 43 stops with published service data, the average is 60 scheduled weekday departures per stop, about 4 buses an hour at peak, and 33 of those stops carry some weekend service, about 77% of them. Those are departures rather than routes, and a stop that counts as served is not the same as a stop worth planning a Tuesday around.
Road noise applies to the whole town rather than a corner of it. Every postcode sits near or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats road traffic as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75. Rail noise registers nowhere at all, which is the one benefit of the Beeching cuts that nobody thinks to list.
Electric charging is thin. Three public charge points across the area, five connectors between them, and one rapid unit. A single rapid charger makes charging something you schedule rather than something you do while buying milk.
Connectivity is the weakest thing about Shepton Mallet, and the weakness is specific rather than sweeping: perfectly workable if your journeys are local and you own a car, awkward the moment either of those stops being true.