I’d use Fade to black/Fade back in effects to signify more time has passed while players “travel” down a road vs. me having players actually move their characters for an hour, just waltz right from town too soon to the next location I want them at, or break their immersion by teleporting their PCs. This would also avoid having to otherwise bump them back to the lobby in between, while I move them, as long as where I want them to explore next is somewhere on the same map.

This would be immersion supportive. For example, I could have them start heading down the road, but then fade to black and fade them back in. This would indicate time passed and they traveled further, but this way, they can still explore without being hard-teleported to an area further away I had to build without an effect like this.

Maybe this can be more easily done by triggering this sort of Post Processing Fade in/Fade Out effect attached to a trigger line. That way whenever the PCs cross this demarcation line in either direction, it fades out and in to represent the extra travel.