User blog comment:The Milkman/Skyrim Titbits/@comment-3492791-20120825204105/@comment-3492791-20120826184656

My idea of fast tarveling isn't that it's harder because you have to walk, it because if you fast travel you never have to fight the dragon lurking in between the two areas. It's more about that there are inherent dangers to traveling yourself. If you feel like being lazy, you always can be. As I also already mentioned, every major city has a carriage that can take you to a different major city. Or, just get a horse, it'll speed up "foot" travel. Or, get an Arvak, the best interdimentional horse to ever spawn from the aether.

With the addition of weighted gold, you can't carry crazy amounts of money on you,. So you will need to plan for these carriage rides in advance, or risk running out of cash and being FORCED to walk. The removal of quest markers becomes rather moot when you still don't have to navigate and can teleport directly to the place you need to be. With stat penalties from sleep deprivation, drug addiction, or Vampirium, you could fast travel somewhere and then drop dead from being penalized to 0 health.

Yes, having to walk everywhere is tedious. However this is not where the "difficulty" comes from. There are many random encounters that may kill the player while traveling on foot. Giants, Bears, Dragons, Theives, Scavangers, Bandit ambushes, etc etc. If one plans ahead, the carriage is always an option, but one that may be lost if the player spends all their pocket money. Tediousness is not the goal, forcing random encounters is.