The only innovative thing? It also takes advantage of mobile phones to aggregate and coordinate passengers and drivers (much like regular Lyft), allowing smaller cars with more frequent service, and responding to demand. That's quite an innovation over a traditional bus.

presumably lyft shuttle could start running a route anywhere in the country tomorrow, given sufficient demand.

maybe other bus operators are better, but denver metro's RTD takes months to make minor route timing changes. i expect new routes take even longer.

I'm a huge fan of buses, and public transportation in general. I like riding buses and subways. I think it's semi-magical that you can get such a far distance on a fixed cost. But can they be improved? I would sure hope so.

I think you do have to be careful with excluding the poor from a new "invention" that is designed to make better the thing that a lot of poor people use. But I don't think poor people not using this initially is a good enough reason not to try.