As far as I know, there's no way to board the ships in the Scorn port area without dropping a boarding pass. I am suggesting this because it's quite annoying to buy many tickets at once, and equally annoying to open a container and drop a boarding pass on the altar. A solution to this would be to add a quest in the Scorn port, where the reward is not having to drop a boarding pass because the sailors owe their lives to you.
And speaking of buying the tickets - The ticket buying facility should be more like the money-to-gem converters; the altar takes some money, and instantly supplies as many tickets as it can make with the money.
Personally, I feel that the necessity of buying tickets is OK, though it wouldn't hurt to streamline the process for buying more than one. The idea of doing a quest for a "lifetime pass" might work, but maybe it could be a high-end reward in the Scorn Nobility questline?
Several people on IRC have suggested this as well. Should this be the reward from a quest, or something more like a multiple-use transit card? Or forego the boarding pass and just pay right before getting on?