It's that you don't have to wonder if there is a bus to your destination, and if it's running today, and whether you can take the dogs with you, and is there a return service, etc. You don't have to stand in the pissing rain waiting for the bus that isn't coming because they're running a reduced schedule due to strikes, driver illness, or whatever. Also, when The Man decides you're not travelling, well. You're not travelling.

There are simply too many people now for everyone to live within walking or even cycling distance of their place of work. It was practical when, in a town of 10,000 people of working age, they almost all worked in the local industries, and lived in the kinds of housing that was within a mile or so (aka shitty slums).

There are a couple of correct answers here:

1. Eliminate the need to commute. People should work from home where it is practical. This is a lot of people. And this will lift the load on the transport infrastructure for those who do need to commute.

2. Improve mass transit. This should be entirely focussed on commuting right now.

3. Eliminate ICE vehicles. This will make everything quieter and cleaner.

4. For shorter journeys, greatly improve sustrans infrastructure - this means proper cycleways everywhere, nice wide footpaths, properly engineered crossings where peds and cyclists have to traverse roads, mass transit vehicles that can accommodate a lot of bikes, etc.

tl;dr: the ability to partake of personal travel, without recourse to a third party for permission, is freedom. There are a very large number of journeys made, however, that are either unnecessary, or could be made via sustrans and/or mass transit. But personal travel is still freedom, and doing these things makes it better.