BROOKLINE, Mass. — Katie Pasciucco, 34, an account manager at a software company, is a typical Boston commuter. Her door-to-door trip to work is just 4.5 miles but takes at least 50 maddening minutes.

With no predictable subway schedule available, she usually waits several minutes for a train. It makes numerous stops before she gets off, and then she still has to walk 20 minutes.

And so she leapt at the chance this week to travel a new way — by old-fashioned bus.

This new-old method of transport has comfortable seats and Wi-Fi. But its real innovation is in its routing. It is a “pop up” bus service, with routes dictated by millions of bits of data that show where people are and where they need to go. The private service uses chartered buses and is run by a start-up technology company called Bridj.

Bridj enters the Boston market at a tumultuous time for transit services here, where a proliferation of options has intensified the competition for rider dollars. (Boston has the third-highest share of households without cars in the country, after New York and Washington.) Ride-sharing services like Uber, which allow customers to hail cars — and now, even water taxis — on their smartphones, have disrupted Boston’s traditional taxi industry, which says that Uber has taken away 30 percent of its business.