Sometimes, rider comfort determines value. Such as on an airplane, where a couple inches can determine if your neck and back are screwed up for hours. Or on a bus in Dubai, where air conditioning may determine if you look like you just stepped out of a lake of perspiration.
In this case, the Leap is doing what someone else already alluded to: giving you a Lexus version of a bus. It's not like it's providing air conditioning where it didn't exist, or needed room where it didn't exist [in fact, it does the opposite].
Added value is when you get more for your money. Like when you get a free bag of peanuts with your ride, or your ride costs less, or introduces air conditioning. Adding luxury changes the value, but while also increasing the cost. And things introduced purely as a luxury tend to be pretentious.
As it's designed now, there are less seats, higher prices, and increases the amount of traffic on the roads. If this service became popular they'd either have to raise the price (ala Uber/Lyft surges) or increase the number of buses, which forces you to choose between increased cost or increased traffic, neither of which improves transportation.
I wasn't trying to suggest we shouldn't have luxury items. Just that when it comes to an alternative bus [transportation means], what we don't need is a luxury bus. We need a more efficient bus. Less seats, higher prices and a potential increase in traffic does not seem more efficient to me.
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Let's be honest. This service is intended to cater to people who are "too classy" for the bus, but too cheap for an expensive car service. It's not getting them there faster, and definitely not cheaper, but it is giving them fancy drinks and a space to open up their laptops away from the poor, unwashed masses. It's the upper-middle-class bus service. "Tired of looking at poor people? Need a place to USB charge your phone? Like the idea of going to work in a mobile coffee shop? Try Leap!"
Now that's pretentious.