Could merchants create, or be sold somewhere a travel card that
would allow you to make 10 trips with like 70% or 65% of the price.
Maybe merchants with excellent bargaining skills could make travel
tickets that give even more discount.

Thank you,

~/A

I think I'd prefer to see a way in which merchants could set up and run
there own ferry services (without actually having to be present on ships).

If they can build/buy boats, add certain ferry requirements, pay for the
required berths in ports/harbours, perhaps some kind of licenses for certain
routes and some special crew, they could be allowed to have their own ferry
service.

If berths and route licences (or whatever) were auctioned, and there was
some maintenance cost and/or crew costs, there wouldn't be too many
services.

Also, a merchant would have to choose a price to attract customers and
still be able to cover their costs (or at least some large portion of
them).
In addition, it would be easy add some kind of frequency adjustment to
a service. Lower frequency (longer pauses or slower ships) would cost
less to run.

Tim