What the Route Sanity Score actually means.

The score is a fast geographic warning system. It is not a statement that a trip is objectively good, safe or bookable.

Signals currently used

• Very long jumps: legs over roughly 900 km receive a penalty because they often consume significant airport or transfer time.
• Potential backtracking: if visiting the middle stop makes a three-stop sequence much longer than going from the first stop directly to the third, RouteRiff flags the sequence and can identify the largest detour stop.
• Average segment length: routes with consistently large gaps between stops receive a gradual penalty.
• Total travel load: the score is reduced when the rough accumulated transfer load becomes very high.

How travel load is estimated

RouteRiff currently uses straight-line distance plus simple mode heuristics. Very long legs are treated like flights and shorter legs like rail, driving or local transfers. Extra time is added for transfer overhead. This is intentionally directional, not timetable-grade routing.

Score vs. verdict

The numeric score and the plain-English verdict are related but not identical. A route can have a moderate numeric score and still show Rework before booking when it has a strong backtracking signal, multiple very long jumps, or an unusually high estimated travel load per detected trip day. If you provide a trip-day count, RouteRiff can use that pacing context in the verdict even though the base score remains a route-shape heuristic.

What the score does not know

It does not know your real flight, train or ferry schedule; road topology; border wait; visa status; mobility needs; weather; venue opening hours; hotel check-in rules; or whether a long transfer is worth it to you.

How the Optimize button works

The optimizer is intentionally transparent and geography-only. It keeps your first and last stops fixed, builds a simple nearest-neighbor order for the middle stops, then applies a small local 2-opt improvement pass using straight-line distance. It does not know rail timetables, roads, borders or ticket availability, so a shorter geographic order is a suggestion to evaluate rather than an automatic travel recommendation.

How to use it

Use the score to ask a better question: where should I double-check this itinerary? Then use the map, manual reordering, Optimize button and AI-fix prompt to test alternatives before checking official transport and booking sources.