I grew up in a pretty rural area in central Europe. I now live in a big city with excellent public transport (also central Europe). Whenever people speak about the carbon footprint of motorized individual transport, I have to think about how it's completely impossible to get by at any place with less than maybe 40,000 people without your own car. And recently I asked myself: Does it have to be that way? Can we solve the problem with political will (i.e. throwing public money at it to subsidize a reasonable pt network)?

Assumptions:

- We find existing local bus companies who already maintain a sparse bus network (e.g. for school children), so we have some basic administrative employees already.

- The line should connect two larger towns with a few detours to cover as many small towns as reasonable. The total length of the route (one-way) would be about 50km.

- That means the ride takes 50-70 minutes.

- I want buses from 4am to 11pm with buses at least every 30 minutes during peak hours and at least every hour during off-peak hours.

- We're in central Europe

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My own estimate:

- Wage for bus driver: Probably around 35,000€/driver/year

- we need 6 buses to cover the line (120 minutes two-way, every 30 minutes, with some buffer)

- We will need about 20 bus drivers (a normal weekday probably needs 12, one per bus in two shifts plus some for the weekend and holiday replacements etc.), which puts us at total wages of 700,000€/year.

- The buses probably need about 30l gasoline per 100km. I'd say on average (weekends weekdays) we'll have 25 two-way-trips total, resulting in 750l gasoline.

- Gasoline price is fluctuating but usually in the ballpark of around 1.50€/l, putting us at 1125€/day and 410,000€/year

- Bus insurance should be around 2000€/bus/year according to this slightly sketchy looking site. So 12,000€/year in total.

- Bus maintenance is difficult to say but should not be higher than 10,000€/bus/year? So 60,000€/year.

So that puts us at a total of 1.2 Million €/year for one bus line with decent frequency. Is that realistic in any way? Am I miscalculating something? Bonus points: Does anybody know anybody who is in the pt sector or has real-live numbers?