Fairly well by car, poorly by anything else. The station is in the next village. Buses are rare. More than half the working residents don't commute at all. In West Horsley the connection that really matters is the broadband.
West Horsley is served by Horsley station, which takes its name from both villages but stands in East Horsley. Effingham Junction and Clandon are the other nearby stations. Even so, only about 1% of working residents commuted by train at the 2021 Census. There are 10 bus stops in the area, and the share of residents who commute by bus is so small it rounds to 0%. Most people use the station for the occasional trip, and very few for the daily one.
The census figures on how people get to work explain why. About 55% of working residents work mainly from home, about 37% drive, about 3% walk and about 1% cycle. Only about 5% of households have no car, and about 71% have two or more. Among the people who do leave the house to work, almost all of them drive.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey times for the area put the nearest town centre 17 minutes away by car, 32 by public transport, 38 by bike and 110 on foot. A walk of nearly two hours means there is no walking into town from here. The same statistics put a GP 11 minutes away by car, 20 by public transport or 30 on foot, and a food shop 10 minutes by car or 31 on foot. A hospital is 25 minutes by car and an hour by public transport, and the nearest large cluster of jobs is 36 minutes by car and 20 by public transport. These are averages modelled for the whole area. The car and walking times only depend on distance and so hold steady, but the public transport times date from 2019 and are the least reliable, because services have been cut since.
Bus numbers today are thin. Each stop gets an average of 13 scheduled departures on a weekday and fewer than one bus an hour at peak time, and only 40% of stops have any service at the weekend. The timetable is easy to keep in your head because there is so little of it.
Broadband is the opposite story. Gigabit broadband reaches about 99% of premises, the same share have ultrafast and superfast, and almost none fall below the government's minimum broadband standard. More than half the workforce commutes by fibre, and the fibre doesn't need a timetable.
Mobile is just as reliable. About 100% of the area has 4G or 5G from at least one network, and about 99% has it from every network.
Road noise is the price of being close to through traffic. Every postcode in West Horsley is near road noise at or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats it as significant, and the loudest band reaches 75 decibels or more. Rail noise is a separate source: every postcode is also near railway noise mapped at the 65-decibel band, which is the highest band recorded here. None of that says how loud any particular house will be, so stand in the garden of the house you're looking at during the morning rush hour.
There is 1 public charge point in the area, with 1 connector, and none of it is rapid charging. Anyone with an electric car charges at home, or plans the trip around the one plug.
For a typical working household, the village works by car and through the broadband. A daily train commute means a trip to a station in the next village, and anyone without a car will find the buses don't come often enough.
West Horsley's connections are middling: excellent online and fine by car, but weak for anyone relying on buses or trains. It suits people who drive or rarely need to travel.