"If you're just building static HTML files, then sure, your URL routing is, and probably should be handled by Apache, because each page is its own destination. In modern web development though, you have an application"
This is part of the problem, though: most websites should just be collections of static files, but copious kool-aid swallowing has led to heavyweight frameworks being the default architecture.
I suppose, but that's a highly variable statement to make. Undoubtedly, there are many websites that could be reduced to static equivalents, but as I deal in web applications, that's kind of a tough pill to swallow.
With apps, even if I build a single-page app, I have to build an API to power it, and that API needs to know the difference between "customers" and "customers/customer_id", and the easiest logical way to manage that is through URL routing.
Even in static apps, URL routing is kind of a burden, unless you never link to internal pages and never grow your content beyond what you can keep in your head.
This is part of the problem, though: most websites should just be collections of static files, but copious kool-aid swallowing has led to heavyweight frameworks being the default architecture.