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The fancy name is "false dichotomy", and you're completely right.

It's not even a realistic representation of the commute choice. In the US, with a heavily car centric culture and ~stupid housing policy, we still have an average daily commute of about 55 minutes. Aren't gonna save an hour on that.

…by increasing the time to a destination and reducing access? By forcing people to live mandated lives in a 15 minute radius? By making everyone crowd into unsafe and dirty public transit? All of these and any other options you might name will hurt people’s lives as well. I can’t imagine an alternative that doesn’t confirm GP’s point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

That also has a cost. Needing to uproot your entire life and move everything around.