Servers and app maintenance has recurring fees. Taking public transportation itself is based on a pay-per-use model. Why assume that paying 2.99$ for an app entitles you to free lifetime updates and support? A lot of apps do it, but more and more we hear that it is not a sustainable revenue model. It would be a whole lot different if Apple allowed paid upgrades, but they don't.

The only issue I have with this is that, AFAIK, the city is offering you this information for free. I can understand if you were paying a licensing fee to have access to the location data, you'd want to cover that fee. But wrapping up a stream of data someone else produces and curates doesn't justify a recurring fee to me.

You'd be surprised at how ugly the data we get provided is. The "curating" is actually much of the work we do. We probably spent as much time developing internal tools that clean and improve that data that on the app itself.

Server costs and continued development also are recurring expenses. Like I said, we might have gone down a different path if Apple allowed paid upgrades, but they don't.

If you don't want to pay them you could always process the GTFS yourself.

I agree with this line of thinking but it's not what people are used to. As much as it sucks, anything more than free people will complain.

Completely agree. I hope you keep this model up.

I actually feel more confident paying for this app's service than I do using the competing City Maps by Lumatic, just because the economics are clear and I know the app won't suddenly change to a new revenue model after I've been relying on it for a year. $5 / year for always-up-to-date routes seems more than fair.

$5/year is totally reasonable! that even gets you the ability to use it on multiple devices.