There are JIRA reports about creating pages in the product XML here
VBV-3667 and here
VBV-4876.
While I do agree there should be a better way to do it, and that is the point of the JIRA reports, I find it amusing that you complain about how to create pages and routes when both mods I've released for vB5 have them without using template.php.
And I have to say, the more I work with vB5 the more I like it.
But like anything that's new, it takes time and patience to understand what's going on and how to use it. And we're all learning as we go.