> I would imagine municipalities' manual route planners wouldn't be that great. Depends. If the same routes have been in use for a long time, odds are they are

> I would imagine municipalities' manual route planners wouldn't be that great. Depends. If the same routes have been in use for a long time, odds are they are already really optimized. Bus drivers will take the same route year after year, and make suggestions to optimize it (often times by "going off route" now and then, which is very much against the rules, but at times very much needed), and those suggestions will get rolled in next year. 5 or 10 years of incremental improvements add up.