I think you still completely misunderstand almost everything.

Long commutes are the result of bad city planning. Most of the long commutes are not in rural areas, but essentially from the outskirts of a city to the city center.

America decided to build huge suburbs devoid of any meaningful jobs. Suburbs are low density, so you need to build a lot of them to house the people, but that also means a lot of space is taken up by hardly any people. So the distance between your house and your job is simply longer.

That has absolutely nothing to do with the size of the country. You don't plan a city on a national scale. That happens locally.

This entire thread is another example of the "murica never bad, murica special" trope. North America isn't magically a completely different place from everywhere else.

The suggestion is that you permit the building of higher density housing. Note that currently, the law actually forbids doing this in most of America. Something anyone opposed to "big government" (like any American conservative claims to be) should be horrified by. (While left-leaning people should be horrified by it because it's terrible for the environment, makes cost of living worse, and has negative social effects.)

Some people would still choose to live further out, and that's totally fine. But a lot of people would choose to live closer to their place of work, which they can now afford to do because you've suddenly got 3 terraced homes and some parkland in the space that used to only hold 1 sprawling house and a mostly-unused yard. And even better, as you increase density, the relative efficiency of public transport goes up, and if it's frequent and reliable, many people will choose to use public transit rather than drive everywhere because it's just less stressful and easier. Or they might cycle instead.

Either way, they're getting a car off the road and decreasing congestion, making it faster and easier for everyone else who still does drive.