Conceptual Distances

Humans have interesting concepts of distance, where the conceptual distance of a space can significantly exced objective distance. The presence of a threshold is an econceptual obstacle, which increases distance.  I have observed that when some friends are given a route that requires multiple transfers i  commute, they complain that the objective is out of the way, even though the time spent or objective distance traveled proves to be far from considerable.  This constantly confuses me, given how easy it is to get objective measures of such distances. I am loath to fall back on the convenient reasoning that humans are at their core lazy and thus prone to irrational thought shortcuts, but it certainly appears to be the case here.