Not only does this apply to trade lanes but with regards to where you could go via jump gates or with jump holes.

You could think of jump gates like a space highway, often placed at the edges of systems connected to the rest of the important spots (or at least the important/civilized/non-criminal locations) in a system with trade lanes. Want to go to another system? You used the jump gates to do so.

This works fine for a good majority of accessing the systems in the game, but once you start getting to the more undeveloped, frontier systems, your ability to travel is also affected, like if you had to drive down a rough, dirt road as opposed to a tarmac highway.

You may have to forgo the use of trade lanes entirely in some places that don’t have them and some systems are not accessible via jump gates either, with you needing to find jump holes instead to reach them. In fact, to get some of the best ships in the game you’d have to access the Outcasts factions home planet which you can only do via said jump holes.

I thought it was really cool how they did that, was an effective little change in gameplay to show the development of a location and made exploring and going off the beaten track super rewarding!