I believe you simply made a choice. I live in the bay area, but my commute is hour long,30 miles away from my house, and I don't have any jobs that I want to do near my house. That's a choice I made.
So, yes, I made a choice to get into software development. It wasn't an informed choice.
How about we come at it from the reverse angle: why are all those 55-person tech companies founded in Seattle? They pay more taxes. They pay more for office space and pretty much everything else. They create a longer commute for everybody by centralizing all the work. What's the problem with spreading-out a bit?
Anyway, the question was how to help blue-collar workers, and I just gave an answer that amounts to basically, "move jobs where they are".
That's not to say they're idiots, of course not. But it might be to say that the reasons for placing their company in the center of a large city aren't very rational or well-considered.
And lots of them do. See all the startups in decidedly suburban Silicon Valley. (And yes, I am being a bit snarky here in equating everything outside of cities, be that suburban sprawl or proper countryside.)
Also see SAP in Walldorf.
I think there are quite a few companies which will accept remote workers, so in some sense, you can work in tech literally anywhere.
This is all interconnected, and nothing is going to change it in the foreseeable future. I'm sorry, it's just the reality. You can commute, work remote, move to the city, struggle to put together a teeny company in a small town, or do some other kind of work. That's just modern reality.