I am not saying working from home will reduce the carbon footprint, but it helps reduce congestion and could even allow a reduction in services, or the length of trains or whatever. At worst, it just makes a journey more pleasant as there are less people. Nobody running public transport wants that though, do they!
Of course, as I have a season ticket and pay either way, I bet the TOCs would LOVE it for me to work from home once or twice a week - and have loads of other people doing the same.
And people WANT to live in the country. Obviously not all, and it changes during your life (when I was young, living in London was everything). When you have kids or get older, you want more space - and unless you're rich, you aint getting that in town!
Working from home, or remotely, doesn't solve everything and I would never pretend otherwise - but there are many examples of where it just doesn't make any sense to have everyone in an office. Likewise, people want social contact - so working from home ALL the time is a recipe for disaster for most.
One idea that is being looked at is regenerating local communities where people can work from home, but not IN their home. Let's say I live in a village and would normally commute into London - with many others - but could work from home, I could instead work from a local 'office' (a converted pub, community hall or whatever) and still have that social contact - albeit with people who work for another company.
It can't and won't work for all trades, but I write and could be sitting absolutely anywhere in the world for my work. I could be on a beach with a laptop. As long as I have an Internet connection and mobile, I'm done. Many other people are going to be in a similar situation.
The other big obstacle was that bosses simply won't trust workers to work if they're not being watched. Sadly, I believe that too many people would skive off. That's probably the main reason businesses aren't happily letting people work away from the office on occasion.