I've tried to make an alt a few times and I think the highest I've gotten was about level 15. Trudging through the story again and unlocking various features tends to slow me down (though it doesn't help that I have all the jobs at high levels as that makes it even less of a new experience).

I'd be in favor of ways to make the game more alt-friendly but it's likely that anything they could do to accomplish that would require a lot of development time and/or resources, so we aren't likely to see anything like it soon (but I could be wrong about the amount of work that would be required and wouldn't mind being surprised).