January 3, 2026 | Financial Tims | by CARLO RATTI.

++Instant deliveries take their toll on urban centres but rewarding a few minutes’ delay can help++

In recent years, most of us have grown accustomed to having almost anything delivered to our homes. Press a button on an app and your apartment can be filled with every possible delight — from a fragrant meal to the latest board game. Yet this behaviour is clogging our cities with delivery vehicles and >>congestion<<. A new study by our group at MIT, based on millions of grocery deliveries in the United Arab Emirates, suggests that this can be countered with an old-fashioned virtue: >>patience<<. A >>delay<< in >>delivery time<< of just five minutes is a powerful tool for relieving urban traffic.

Remember the days before Covid? Many of us would make a few shopping trips every week, often combining them with other errands. Today, those have largely been replaced by multiple home deliveries. Especially in the festive and sales season, doorbells and app notifications buzz nonstop — and so do vans and riders on busy streets.

Last-mile<< deliveries can, in principle, be highly efficient. A single van can bundle together many stops an hour in dense neighbourhoods. But this efficiency clashes with our desire for instant gratification. Since the early days of Amazon Prime and one-click shopping, delivery platforms have been locked in an arms race for speed, shaving minutes off delivery times.

As this rush multiplies road loads, our streets are becoming increasingly clogged. According to a recent World Economic Forum report, global delivery traffic is projected to increase by as much as 61% by 2030, largely driven by ecommerce. When an app steers customers towards the fastest slot, it becomes harder to >>bundle<< orders. Each click tends to generate its own journey. Platforms compete in seconds; streets pay in congestion.

To better understand this effect, we analysed real-world delivery data — more than 8mn grocery orders in the UAE — in collaboration with the Dubai Future Foundation. We plotted how many trips could be combined as a function of slightly longer delivery times. The results are striking. When customers accept a mere five-minute delay, the total kilometres travelled by delivery vehicles falls by around 30 per cent. This echoes broader urban patterns such as staggered work or school start times, where small behavioural changes can smooth peak demand without new infrastructure. And while additional waiting helps, you do not have to do so for long. In mathematical terms, the relationship is not linear — the first few minutes of patience bring the most gains, as they introduce enough slack in the system to match compatible routes and orders. Such findings open the door to new urban policies that balance immediate individual satisfaction with the collective optimisation of city life — what economists call the “price of anarchy”. Monetary incentives offer an obvious starting point, from green discounts to peak congestion charges such as Singapore’s long-running electronic road-pricing system. Many retailers already offer cheaper “no rush” delivery slots, although these are often presented as second-class services. Platforms could instead highlight “green” slots at times and locations where bundling is easiest, and work with municipalities to document the reduction in traffic that follows. City governments, in turn, could reward operators that steer demand towards these slots, for instance through preferential access or loading space. With bundling, each vehicle serves more addresses per trip. That generally means lower fuel costs, less time spent in traffic and, potentially, smaller fleets. Patient customers could be offered lower fees or loyalty rewards. From an urban equity perspective, however, not everything is as simple as that. Ultra-fast delivery services tend to cluster in wealthier neighbourhoods, while the vans serving them criss-cross the wider metropolis. The benefits of speed and the burdens of congestion are not evenly distributed. The risk is creating a two-tier system where affluent areas get the speed and suburbs bear the traffic. Yet trying this new approach promises a large impact with a modest ask. For years, technology has promised to collapse distance and time. The next phase of innovation may involve adding a few tweaks to that equation where they can do the most good for the city as a whole.

Patience may no longer be fashionable as a moral virtue. But for cities, it could become a very practical one.