Trying to do a little math on this, but I have no idea how much it costs to maintain or fuel a bus.
But on a single bus, can make some assumptions:
- 15 passengers per trip = $270 per trip.
- fuel, say for 25km journey, say at 40 l/100km is 10 litres, or around $15
- driver, say costs $100/hr, that's $50 for 30 mins.
- maintenance, I don't know make it $2/km - that's $50
So that's about $155 per trip. Assume utilisation of bus for 12 hrs a day, that's 24 trips a day ... so that's $3700/day, or $1.4 m per year per bus to cover admin expenses, depreciation and capital cost. Sounds like there's a little bit of profit in there for them.
Worth comparing to greyhound, who for a 10 hr journey from Melbourne, eg. to Adelaide, charge $94 full fare (and offer discounts on this as well).