Why edit PBF data?

The first flowchart represents my understanding of how others are approaching custom routing.

flowchart LR
OSM --> Extract["Extract Data (to avoid)"] --> Project[Create Projections] -.-> Router
Project -.-> Query
OSM[("OSM data (PBF)")] --> B2["Change Format (ex: .obf, .mwm)"] --> Router["Routing Server"]
Router --> Query[Navigation Query]
Query --> Router
Query --> App["Custom Mobile Mapping Application"]
App -->|Location data| Query

Issues:

Responsible for creating or altering a mobile mapping application. (This is a lot of work! ; especially for cross-platform support)
Maintaining Routing Server, ties up resources (in these trying times)
Additional latency to end user

The next flowchart represents the path I took to create custom routing.

Editing the pbf data directly removes any interactions with the routing engine. Thus, we can take advantage of existing open source “full stack” navigation applications (Osmand, Comaps, Organic Maps).

flowchart TD
    subgraph Edit PBF 
        OSM[("OSM data (PBF)")] --> Extract["Extract Data (to avoid)"] --> Project[Create Projections] -->|Strategic Edits| OSM
    end
    subgraph Then import and use 
        OSM --> B2["Change Format (ex: .obf, .mwm)"] --> App("General Mobile Mapping Application (ex: Osmand, Comaps, Organic Maps)")
    end

The only issue I have is with the burden of data updates being decentralized.
The secret sauce is the “strategic edits” to alter the data to implement custom routing. Getting this right took some trial and error.
Many applications utilize OSM data so it’s not just limited to those navigations apps. Although I haven’t tested, this method should work to adjust routing in SUMO, osmnx, A/B Street, or MATsim.