The year 2020 will go down as historic for a lot of reasons. Less traffic on our roads was one of them. The COVID-19 pandemic shattered the norms of how we move as a society on a day-to-day basis. Fewer cars in use led to declines in congestion and improvements in air quality, two things that we clearly have been â and should be â striving for. âThe longtime goals of reducing the number of cars on the roads and unacceptable levels of air pollution [were] achieved in a few weeks,â said Claudia Adriazola-Steil, director of health and road safety at the World Resources Instituteâs Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, in a June 2020 New York Times report. âYou can see the Himalayan blue skies for the first time in 25 years.â