Image: Transit
Montréal-based Transit launched ‘Transit Royale’ last week — a new subscription service that offers full departure schedules, maps for transit lines in every single city the app operates in, special app themes, and customizable icons based on transit systems from different parts of the world.
Transit Royale subscribers will also get a custom avatar and nickname that will represent them in leaderboards for the app’s crowdsourced, real-time GO feature.
Transit is a public transit navigation app that serves 300 cities across the globe, including Quebec City, Toronto, Montréal, and Victoria. The app offers accurate real-time predictions, step-by-step navigation, trip planning, and easy payments to partner transit agencies. Transit even integrates private transit systems like Uber that offer bikeshare, carshare, and ridehail services.
With the introduction of Transit Royale, core app features like departure schedules, digital tickets, multimodal integrations, and trip planning will remain free for all users.
Following a grace period, however, full departure schedules and maps for transit lines that are farther away from the user will only be available to Royale subscribers.
Transit’s partner agencies have the option to subscribe to the service themselves and gift Royale to all of their patrons, either as a standalone option or bundled with other services.
RTD in Denver, Metro Transit in St. Louis, Big Blue Bus in Santa Monica, RTA in Dayton, and RTS in Rochester are among the agencies that have signed up for the system-wide subscription so far.
Transit agencies that subscribe will also be getting a customized, branded app experience for their riders.
“Almost a decade ago, I started Transit with my co-founder Guillaume. We didn’t follow the path of some other transportation apps, which rely on selling personal data, running ads, or competing against public transit. Instead, we built an app that puts transit riders first,” said Sam Vermette, CEO of Transit, in a statement to iPhone in Canada.
“Now with Royale, we’re launching a model that’s supported by both users and partner transit agencies. It means we can keep building an app that stays true to riders over the long term,” added Vermette.
For individual users, the Transit Royale subscription will cost $4.99 CAD/month, or $24.99 CAD/year. Transit users who can’t afford Royale can request a free subscription in the app, no questions asked.
Transit Royale launched on August 19 in cities where Transit does not have a partnership with the local transit agency. In partner cities (such as Vancouver and Montreal), the subscription service will launch sometime in 2022.
