Freight lanes

[Grumblesaur]

There are in-universe reasons for not wanting to do this as well; the current arrangement of trade lanes is intended to service all major destinations in a system by drawing traffic to hubs where they can switch course to the next hub or system departure point. Spending additional resources to build superfluous, low-traffic freight-specific connections would be expensive, wasteful, and increase the manpower required by police forces to dispatch patrol details to trade lane routes.

For all the same reasons that you connect all your computers to your house to a router or switch rather than connecting every computer to every other computer -- far fewer cables, and one or a few central locations where you can view most or all of the traffic in the system. This keeps smuggler characters on their toes when they're feeling frisky and want to take the trade lanes. If you could just hop gate-to-gate and avoid the planets (and nearby capship patrols), hauling illicit goods would become too easy for the amount of money it nets you.

Yes, this creates additional bottlenecks, but if pirates didn't have a place where they could snatch you without having to guess between two or three different lanes, they wouldn't have a reason to play. No pirates means no law enforcement. It's a big web of symbiotic relationships and relationships don't happen when everyone's alt-tabbed looking at boob pictures or watching YouTube riding the fast lane to the next jump gate.

Besides, if making money quickly is your main goal in this game, you should be mining anyway.

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A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay,
brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.