When and How to Detour

The last couple of days were uneventful rides, and I was busy dealing with a change in cell-phone, some bathroom painting-prep, and other miscellany.

I've been on a couple of rides (inbound to downtown both, so far) where the traffic on the highway was bad enough that the driver felt the need to detour off the highway in order to try and keep to their schedule. I was curious, so I asked one of them once how they chose when and how to detour. I gather from his response that they have a reasonable amount of discretion, so long as they don't skip any stops. They don't have to stick to any particular route, though there are some pre-approved detour-routes available for them (routes where someone's already determined that the buses can make all the necessary turns, etc.).

I'd be surprised if they didn't basically just allow detours along any established routes, though. There're all these signs with route-numbers and arrows indicating which way various routes should go at key intersections, etc., etc.