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In U.S. cities, busy streets fuel commerce and sustain the background noise to everyday life. Their emptiness today, as a pandemic races across the country, stands as a grim marker of the peril of our times.

In New York City, the cacophony of honking taxis, lurching buses and stop-and-start traffic has given way to the wailing of sirens. In Los Angeles — who could have imagined LA without traffic? — the clock has been turned back 50 years. One can get from downtown to the Valley in no time, at any time of day. Commuting times, for those still rushing to work, have shrunk in Boston. And in Houston, officials are taking advantage of less traffic to speed up a paving project on one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares. Chicago and Washington, D.C., too, have seen traffic levels plummet.

Open up Google Maps during rush hour in any of these cities, and all you will see are open roads ahead.

As a result, our air is cleaner — in Los Angeles, pollution is at levels not seen in decades — and car crashes are down, although police departments are worried that drivers are going too fast. Even the Earth is vibrating less, according to seismologists.

Our empty streets and freeways tug at conflicting feelings. An ease of movement was never part of the deal of life in these cities, especially in places designed around the automobile, like Los Angeles and Houston. Now, the chance to move so freely has provoked a sense of marvel, reorienting our relationship to the cities in which we live. But that is leavened by a feeling of disorientation and an understanding that we are living in unprecedented times, with so many falling sick.

c.2020 The New York Times Company