A channel router which is to be effective for general-purpose automatic routing must be able to use different sets of routing criteria priorities, in a controllable manner. We present an approach to channel routing with compaction in which channel compaction is adaptable to several routing criteria priorities. We show how overall channel routing performance can be improved by taking advantage of this versatility in channel compaction. We indicate some routing capabilities which cannot be effectively achieved by simply post-processing the output of a traditional gridded channel router. Our solution to this problem is outlined and some results obtained from our router are compared with those of other published channel routers.