Making People and Other Things Go Away

How do you take a highway that is jammed with cars all the time and make it look like this?
How many times have you been photographing a scene and no matter what you do or how long you wait, there is always someone in the scene.  The same thing can be said about city streets, highways and any number of different busy landscapes. Obviously, you can’t shut the streets down or get people out of the way by asking nicely.
This is a technique ‘for clearing the area’. My examples show a highway that always has cars on it shot from an overpass and a very busy canal walk in Indianapolis.  In both cases I composed and locked down my shot with a tripod.  All images have to be made with the same exposure. Next I locked down the exposure and shot the image using manual settings on the camera.  Once that was done, I did my test exposures and was ready to shoot the multiple images needed for this technique.
Sony A7 II with 25mm Batis Lens
The key is to make sure everything in the shot is moved out of...