I agree with everything you said except for the cost to travel. The only place I'd accept that is if we had more public transportation in the game. Right now I think we only have that boat in Brindleton Bay that takes you to the lighthouse.
But yeah, walkbys of sims from other neighborhoods (especially Sulani for me, so many Sulani sims in Brindleton Bay...) has irked me this entire time. I think just having a toggle in the settings would be fine, this way it doesn't eat up a lot trait slot. But I need something because I'd like to see the actual sims I've created walking around, not the same 10 sims everywhere I go.
The team also needs to limit how many new NPCs keep spawning. I don't even see the like 30 NPCs I remade anymore. I was so tired of seeing randomly generated ugly NPCs clogging up my towns that I finally gave in and remade a bunch, but now they're gone... I play with aging off so it's not like they're dying. Why do so many NPCs keep needing to be generated??
All of this really breaks immersion for me ? I just want to see the sims I actually put effort into making.
