git-svn and *lots* of ssh connections

The company I work for (but do not speak for) uses svn (via ssh). I tried to use it; I really did. But I missed git and found svn quite honestly painful to use so I went to git-svn, and other than some caveats I'm pretty happy. However, one of the issues I've had with git-svn is fairly troublesome.

Basically, during the fetch stage (or clone) git-svn uses a *ton* of ssh connections. Many dozens and in even with smaller projects well over a hundred. By "small" I mean a .git of less than 6MB and less than 60 files in the checkout. I've got 4MBit bandwidth available but frequently see only a single digit fraction of that going to the fetch/clone process. Is there anything that can be done to reduce the number of ssh connections involved? Why can't a single connection simple be re-used? I can't use "ssh connection sharing" for a variety of reasons that aren't relevant here.

I'm using 1.6.0.2.