City traffic is one of the most underestimated background sounds in editing. Cut to an urban exterior with no traffic bed under it and the shot reads as a soundstage; drop in even thirty seconds of distant rumble and the same shot reads as a real street. The brain expects the low hum of moving vehicles wherever there are buildings, and absence reads as wrong faster than presence reads as right.
This page collects 16 traffic recordings covering general street noise, rush-hour jams with idling engines and occasional horns, the doppler of passing cars on quieter roads, and broader urban ambience beds. City-scene editors use them under dialogue cutaways, podcast intros layer them for location flavour, and game audio pipes them into open-world neighbourhoods. Free MP3 download, no attribution needed.