The 20th year of the 3rd millennium was a spring year, which added an extra twenty-four hours to its awfulness. There'due south no demand to recount that awfulness here. Instead, at present that nosotros've kicked off the New Year, what are some of the skillful things that we can look forwards to in 2021 that likely would non happen without a 2020 defined by a pandemic and economic calamity? Here are five most-term fixes for our cities and our transportation systems that will have their origins in what nosotros went through concluding year.

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Downtowns go machine-costless

Our urban cores are emptied out. Worse, fifty-fifty when the pandemic ends, there are enough of indicators that many companies volition never return to their HQs on a total-time basis. Fewer everyday workers downtown ways fewer businesses that rely on them for customers, especially restaurants and retail. Without those, in that location are fewer draws for visitors, since tourists don't create vibrancy—they visit vibrancy. This all means that urban centers will have to radically reinvent themselves to survive this existential threat to their relevance.

Every bit a first step, many cities volition seize the opportunity to finally go automobile-costless. Doing this volition liberate our street spaces. Expect some avenues to fill in with farmer's markets. Others volition host superblocks of nutrient trucks and pop-up eateries. Restaurants will have more infinite for our renewed love of open-air dining. Concerts and festivals will return to waterfronts. Altogether unexpected uses volition also emerge. Beyond them all, though, we'll have more foot traffic supporting more businesses. Cleaner air and quieter streets will exist bonuses.

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More services go mobile

The pandemic was a big heave for food delivery. Many restaurants in item had to chop-chop prototype and deploy their own delivery services or partner with the likes of UberEats, DoorDash, and GrubHub to stay afloat. These services are likely to persist, even when nosotros're all dorsum dining indoors together. Perhaps more importantly, this model of products and services going to customers—versus our traditional model of customers going to products and services—volition expand well beyond restaurants. Moving forward, this will non exist an "or" for existing businesses—information technology'll be an "and," meaning that mobile experiences will be added to their service models. For this reason, scenarios in which products become to customers won't contradict our renewed downtown cores. Instead, the perils of 2020 take taught the best businesses to meet their customers where they are, which might mean in-person at their location one day and through a mobile experience closer to their client'south dwelling on another.

What might this look like? Expect specialized outfitters such every bit bicycle and ski/snowboard shops to start offering mobile repair and tuning services. Bookmobiles and mobile libraries bringing suggested and requested titles directly to readers, especially those in underserved neighborhoods. From mobile barbershops and forepart-yard personal training to in-your-driveway motorcar maintenance, expect more and more kinds of businesses to explore taking their offerings on the road.

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Shipping boarding processes become line-complimentary

The processes airlines use to board their passengers accept been suboptimal for decades, to put it mildly. It'south such a terrible array of processes that, for some curt-booty routes, passengers tin can expect to spend more time waiting at the gate and boarding the aircraft than actually flying. In 2020, though, with passenger counts and scheduled flights at a fraction of pre-pandemic levels, airlines had the gift of downtime (granted, an unwanted souvenir). During that time, the all-time airlines took the opportunity to design new boarding processes. While they're nonetheless to emerge, expect these new processes to accomplish a couple of notable tricks: kickoff, to bring united states of america to the airport gate much closer to boarding and, second, to welcome us onboard without having waited in a line. None of this will have happened without our fresh aversions to crowding and queueing.

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TSA screenings become beyond the aerodrome

Lines to lath the aircraft aren't the only queues that will get a makeover. Even before the pandemic, many airports struggled to proceed the crush of passengers from overwhelming TSA checkpoints. Plus, those checkpoints have yet to benefit from a future-facing design procedure. All of those plastic bins stand for the stubborn persistence of reactionary systems fix up two decades ago post-obit the nine/11 terrorist attacks. In 2021, expect TSA to experiment with new processes that stretch security screening exterior the physical footprint of the airport, such as checkpoints at decentralized locations that and so provide transportation directly to the "air side" (across the in-airdrome security checkpoint) of the airport. The offset of these decentralized locations will still be on aerodrome belongings (just not in the final), just they'll somewhen emerge in other places further afield, including transit stations and perhaps even large hotels.

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Everything stays cleaner

Let's face up information technology: Before 2020, we were gross. Not all of us were washing our hands. Our homes, offices, gyms, and other everyday spaces weren't being cleaned as they should. And our interactions with each other and those spaces was oftentimes far from hygienic, equally evidenced by all sorts of bad beliefs in transit—from failing to encompass coughs and sneezes to sick-timed public grooming. But the pandemic has given u.s. a newfound appreciation—and demand—for cleanliness. This shift in our beliefs is much more a nice-to-accept. The security measures we added to our transportation systems after 9/eleven, while cumbersome, undoubtedly made them safer. Similarly, the measures we put in place to reverberate our new emphasis on health and cleanliness volition assistance us avoid the worst effects of the next pandemic.