This wasn't public information to be scraped, hence the requirement for an account. Creating fake accounts for this purpose is a violation of the current terms

This wasn't public information to be scraped, hence the requirement for an account. Creating fake accounts for this purpose is a violation of the current terms of service [1] (these might have been different in 2016): 9. Restricted Activities h. forge headers or otherwise manipulate identifiers in order to disguise the origin of any information transmitted through the Lyft Platform; l. use any robot, spider, site search/retrieval application, or other manual or automatic device or process to retrieve, index, scrape, “data mine”, or in any way reproduce or circumvent the navigational structure or presentation of the Lyft Platform or its contents; [1] https://www.lyft.com/terms https://www.lyft.com/terms