I have a Garmin for the car, but their public transit directions are difficult to replace.
Maybe something like nixOS where the phone's state is the result of a pure derivation. No installing or configuring anything except through a privileged ssh after decryption. Then boot and go again.
Only automatically updating is possible from the device proper, rollback on failure.
They do; it's called GTFS. It tends to need a lot of cleaning and manual in-person verification, which is expensive.
https://hackaday.io/project/19035-zerophone-a-raspberry-pi-s...
https://openalia.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/diy-totally-open-s...
...then start deleting code out of it, hardening it, and using memory-safe apps. A nice step on the way to a truly, dumb phone that might take a lot of custom work.