Bittrex does not charge for listings.
There is a lot of nonesense going around when it comes to listing fees. Binance, for example, does charge some coins for listings (mostly ICOs which raised a lot of money and haven't accomplished anything but still want a listing right away; seems fair to me) but also lists coins for free.
I wouldn't minimize the effort of forking off to a new coin (including exchange listings but not only that), and I'm neither proposing it nor supporting it right now. But then again, continuing to do what we have been doing doesn't looking too appealing, as you have pointed out. There may not be a better alternative than forking.
Thank you for clearing up the costs of listing. I was repeating something that I heard and I didn't research it at all.