Poorly by rail, adequately by road and well by broadband. Half the working population works from home. Hardly anyone commutes by train or bus. Most households have at least two cars. The broadband carries more of the commute here than the buses do.
There's no station in the village. The nearest options are Reading, Tilehurst and Henley-on-Thames, and every one of them means a drive or a bus first. The last Census found about 1% of workers commuting by train and about 1% by bus. There are 38 bus stops in and around the village. That's a respectable number of stops, and hardly anyone uses them to get to work.
The commute has mostly moved indoors. About 50% of workers work from home and about 40% drive. Walking accounts for about 3% and cycling about 1%. Car ownership backs this up: about 58% of households have two or more cars, and about 9% have none. The few without a car are relying on the bus timetable, a good bike or a generous neighbour.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics are modelled for the area as a whole, not timed from any particular front door. They put the nearest town centre about 15 minutes away by car, 29 by bike and 31 by public transport. On foot it's about 79 minutes, so in practice nobody walks it. Driving takes half the time the bus does, which is why the car wins.
Daily errands are easier. On the same modelled figures, a doctor's surgery is about 9 minutes by car, 14 by public transport and 17 on foot. A food shop is about 7 minutes by car or 16 on foot, close enough to walk for milk. A hospital is about 25 minutes by car and 57 by public transport. That gap matters most to anyone who doesn't drive or can't. The nearest concentration of jobs is about 20 minutes by car and 21 by public transport. The public transport figures date from 2019, and services have been cut since then in many places, so they deserve more caution than the car and walking times.
The bus figures are current. Across the 29 stops with timetable data, the average is about 21 scheduled departures per stop on a weekday and about one bus an hour at peak times. About 72% of those stops have any weekend service at all. One bus an hour at peak is fine for a planned trip into town. For a daily commute, it's hard to rely on.
Broadband is the one connection that works properly. Superfast broadband is available across effectively the whole village, and gigabit and ultrafast both reach about 80% of premises. That's why so many residents can work from the spare room. For about one household in five without gigabit, check the exact address before assuming the video calls will cope.
Mobile coverage is no concern. At least one operator covers 100% of the area with 4G or 5G, and all operators together cover about 99%.
For a typical working week, this all adds up to one pattern. Anyone going into an office drives, or drives to a station, and the half working from home barely notices the gaps. Anyone hoping to live here without a car needs to plan around one bus an hour.
Road noise shows up on the official mapping. All of the area's postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels, the level at which the mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. That describes the modelled noise near the roads, not what any particular bedroom will hear, so stand in the garden at rush hour before you make an offer. Rail noise doesn't register, since the railway is miles away.
Sonning Common is middling for connections and depends on the car for everything except the internet. If you need a train on the doorstep, look at somewhere else. If you work from home, the connection you'll use most is the broadband.