In Europe, tracking hours is common and in many cases mandatory. Unfortunately you can't clock in the moment you step out of your door for your regular commute. So it's not counting towards your contractual hours or overtime compensation.
If you actually track the hours and include commute, the incentive should change for the employer to minimize your commute time (because it costs them money). Of course there's a risk that they'd try to weasel out of it by a corresponding reduction in your base salary, so some additional checks would be needed for this scheme to work.
I don't think people really want to trade time for money as much as they do when it comes to long commutes. I'm pretty sure a lot of people would choose shorter commute any time if given the choice, but right now the onus is on them to leave their nice home and find a more expensive (and probably tight) apartment in congested downtown if they want a shorter commute. It's all on them, and not on the employer to find a way to reduce commute.
The employer has an incentive to reduce commute times - when I was talking to recruiters I had a hard "_MUST_ be within a 30 minute walk, on a light rail line, pay X more, or 100% wfh" requirement. X was, for the market, a pretty high number.
People just trade their time for money, preferring to live farther away from work