People can't keep losing ~2 hours of their lives to commute every workday, amounting to an entire ~1.5 day of time lost every month, literally ~18 days every year, just so that a city can remain 'bustling'. Whatever that means.

There is no way to make up for the time lost in the commute. The time stolen from people's lives this way was 'normal' just because there was no way to avoid it in the past. Now that we know that it can be avoided, trying to force it to continue for whatever reason is inexcusable.