Yes, travel should come with a cost. Kingdom Come deliverance had a similar concept: you'd get hungry, can get ambushed, or you need to sleep at some point.
The Gothic games introduce fast travel very late in the game, with teleporter stones. Also, they had a very densely packed map, so travelling to some other place did not really took that much time. But I think it is a nice alternative.
I recently started playing outward and it has (practically) no fast travel. It really is refreshing, it keeps you thinking what area is best to go to next and you should keep track of your rations, carry capacity etc
(Also, what game do you refer to with FO2?)
40 resting seems very low, do you exercise a lot?