The whole reason Skem is shit, which I realised today while looking at it on a map, is that it's basically a ring road that links to everything in the centre. Except most of the regions in the centre don't link to each other, so the only way to get from one point to another is to go out to the main loop, go round the outskirts of the town, and then come back in.
It's why it's easy to get lost, because you can get pretty close and be fairly confident that there must be a road to get there somewhere, and not realise you've actually got to go all the way back out and come back in at a different bit.