Routes vs htaccess - is there any advantage

[eluser]surfgatinho[/eluser]
As I'm used to rewriting URLs in htaccess this is what I tend to do with my CI sites, and it works OK.
However, as I'm always on the look out for ways to optimise and use best practice, I was wondering whether there is any advantage of getting my head around routes?

I recently ported over a big site to CI and it now requires around 150 lines of URL rewrites in the htaccess file, so I'm thinking, maybe now is the time to start looking at routes