Uhm...
I was of the impression that fast travel was implemented so going long distances wasn't as tedious - now I have to cross rivers on a regular basis, switching between local map and travel map around 5 to 10 times when going from one location to another. Assuming a load time of 3 seconds for loading/unloading the local map this is 15 to 30 seconds for loading alone, not even counting the time it takes to walk to the river, swim across it and then walk away from the river, which takes even more time. I think this is rather tedious, especially if I just want to get to that damn necromancer tower to actually do stuff.
Your "alternatives", if I get that right:
All you have to do is become a novice swimmer, then spend five minutes swimming in a pond. Just press d, swim across the river, sleep for an hour, then leaves. Easy.
Doesn't even get the point of what this is about. I don't want to avoid having to swim across the river, I want to avoid having to load the local map for that.
This comment by Sutremaine actually addresses what this is about:
You should be able to cross rivers on the world map if they're frozen, or if you have Adequate or better Swimming skill. (Adequate is the point at which you don't panic at falling in, so it should be as unproblematic as land travel).
I agree with this proposal.
Bridges on major rivers would make sense, like in the towns
This is also besides the point. Of course going across bridges is nice. But again, having to switch to the local map only because I swim instead of walk seems a bit stupid, especially because there is nothing interesting about swimming at all.
But it would only make sense if your companions were trained swimmers as well
Maybe you should read across what you write before you post it. Unless you
actually meant to imply that companions only are able to cross bridges if they can swim.
Restricting swimming across rivers on the travel map to when all of your companions can swim is fine with me.
The swimming across then sleeping doesn't make much sense either.
I don't even know what that means.
With that already existing, there's really no reason to implement it, other than people want to be in fast travel 24/7.
Because in Dwarf Fortress there's only two activities: Swimming in rivers and fast traveling. I guess I imagined all the other stuff I thought I did.