Is route optimisation worth it for walking routes?

The ordering is worth it. The distance optimisation that delivery tools sell is close to irrelevant at thirty-foot spacing.

Why do delivery route planners feel wrong for knocking?

They optimise road distance for a vehicle. Applied to houses on one street that produces orders that look efficient and walk badly.

What is the biggest time saving available?

Removing the decision between doors. It is invisible per door and it is most of an hour across a day.

What route optimisation actually saves you

Route optimisation for delivery minimises driving distance across many stops. For door-to-door on foot the constraint is different: the doors are close together and the cost is the deciding between them. Optimising for road distance can produce an order that is mathematically shorter and worse to walk.

Two different problems with one name

Delivery routing solves for vehicles on roads with real distance between stops. Door-to-door on foot has stops thirty feet apart, so the routing maths that dominates delivery barely applies and the cognitive cost dominates instead.

Where the real gain is

In never having to think about the next door. That is worth more across a day than any distance saving available at this scale, and it is why nearest-unworked-door tends to beat a cleverly precomputed sequence.

What optimisation cannot fix

Door density. If the addresses are far apart, no ordering makes them close, and reps who expect routing software to fix a sparse area will be disappointed for reasons that have nothing to do with the software.

Common questions

Is route optimisation worth it for walking routes?: The ordering is worth it. The distance optimisation that delivery tools sell is close to irrelevant at thirty-foot spacing.
Why do delivery route planners feel wrong for knocking?: They optimise road distance for a vehicle. Applied to houses on one street that produces orders that look efficient and walk badly.
What is the biggest time saving available?: Removing the decision between doors. It is invisible per door and it is most of an hour across a day.

More on routes

Planning the walk: ordering doors, cutting dead time between them, and route tools compared.

All of routes