I should clarify, Westerly seems to be distant from the more populous urban areas in Rhode Island and socioeconomically and culturally more integrated with the southeastern CT communities.

I should also have made it clear that I am writing from a public transportation perspective since I don’t drive, and my observation has been that southern Rhode Island seems poorly connected with itself.

There are frequent buses that take you from Newport to Providence every day of the week, for example, and the bus system coverage (while definitely nowhere near perfect at all and has a long way to improve) is decent enough throughout and within the Providence metro area (Pawtucket to Prov, or Warwick to Prov, etc). Going in the north-south direction from Newport to Providence is not that bad. Going in the east west direction from Newport to Westerly is far worse because there just isn’t enough public transit options to take you directly there. You’d have to go through Providence (via bus or a mix of bus and train) to get from Newport to Westerly for the fastest route. There just doesn’t seem to be an integrated bus line that takes you directly through Newport-Jamestown-SK-Charlestown-Westerly. I guess what I am trying to say is commuting within the populous eastern RI corridor (even from its southern extremity in Newport to the northern reaches of Providence) is much easier than commuting from eastern RI to Western/southwestern RI via public transportation.