What happens with most of these, is light rail goes to the city for a few surrounding suburbs with 50-100k people per town. To get to that train station every morning, you need a car. No, you cannot have a bus circle the suburb for an hour to pick everyone up. No you cannot have many buses purchased by the suburb and stand still during off times - the taxes from 50k people cannot pay for that. No, no one is going to wait at a chicago suburb busstop for a bus while it's raining in October, or baking in July, or blasting -15 temp at 20mph winds, while the bus is late.
No one is driving cars to the desert. They are driving it to the mall, the restaurant, the rail stop.
They don't have to "deal" with parking. Towns have huge parking lots, and land is cheap.
What you did is make up a strawman, where people living in the dense city don't need a car. Guess what - most people there don't have one. I'm one of those people who has had cars in little towns, and no car while I live in the city.
Yes, there are two people who drive from the suburb to the city. Those are the minority. You see that traffic jam into the city in the morning? That's people's choice to drive. They can instead drive 10min to the rail or bus stop in or near their town. The option of which you speak, is already there. Selecting it or not, is the freedom.
No, I'm not talking about every city. Just most.
And no, we didn't have that which you describe. What we had is people having to work real close to where they lived. They are still free to do exactly that. I've tried that for over a decade, and don't own a car. As a consequence of that choice, I rent and sold the house. Maybe if you have a kid in school, you don't want to move too much. Maybe you get fired too and the next job's not that close. There was no fast subway or rail going all meshed between every town. Rail trips between towns were a thing you packed and dressed for. They were not a thing you took to work and back every morning. That thing, was the light rail to the city, is still there, and many people use it.