TechDirt notes that even in the midst of the abortive transit strike in NYC, many people who could work from home didn't; they trudged in anyway:

There are a variety of reasons given -- from the traditional need for "face time" to the basic separation between home and work life. For many, it appears, the "commute" is more than just the function of getting from home to the office and back again, but a mental separator to keep work out of home life. That's one issue that's not so easy to break down with technology. Still, it will be interesting to see if that's more a generational issue. I would imagine that today's multi-tasking, instant-messaging, text-messaging, listening-to-music, watching-tv, surfing-the-web all at once kids might not have as much need to separate home life from work life.

Some of it might be generational; a lot is simply inertia. There are plenty of people who just can't imagine working from home, and plenty of managers who can't imagine their staff doing so. They've always come to the office; they always will come to the office.

I've been a home based worker since I joined ParcPlace back in 1993 - they didn't have an office in my area (northern VA was too much of a stretch for my taste, and it was just a set of executive office suites anyway). Cincom has no office nearby at all, and I'm not about to relocate - so home based it is. And you know - having been at it for 13 years now, I don't know that I could go back to an office setting without difficulty. You get used to certain modes of work, and - just as many people are looking for that clean separation from work, I'm very used to the fuzzy one.