That number is so far off. It does vary massively but £110k-£130k per year is what Stagecoach want a bus to bring in each year (so included profits).
A large amount of independents though have significantly lower costs so could be around £70k (Think, A lot less depot costs. Also some older vehicles which will be cheaper and not have the lease payments. Also some operators do buses as more of a hobby rather than trying to make mega bucks so want a lot less profit).
I think something which is worth noting which isn't noted is the huge difference in operations between the UK and HK. HK operators tend to have a huge peak bus network 7am-9pm and 4.30pm-6.30pm. The UK doesn't have that really. Bus operators in the UK kind of give a set number of vehicles for a route and then retime the service at peak times to accommodate the extended journey times (so a half hourly bus off peak would be every 40 minutes in the peak) so all buses tend to be out all day, not really giving a huge opportunity where we have loads of buses sat around all day.
That is point 1.
Point 2, the UK has the most buses out at school times. The thing here is though that school times, we then have lot more operators out on the road. Many of these operators are coach operators who, outside of school time, head off and do private hire, day trips, school trips or whatever. Their vehicles aren't sat around all day doing nothing and even if they were, they are mainly coaches or double deckers which aren't suitable for the break even routes which are often in little housing estates and have to deal with grannys and their shopping carts.
Point 3. If we have a main operator who does have additional vehicles out in the peak times, whenever that may be, these buses act as a spare bus to reduce delays or these work out with a maintenance cycle so a bus which does the morning peak, can then have an MOT, service or whatever, in the afternoon (and vice versa) or if it's something which can be done quicker, it can even be sorted between the peak times so this means that if a maintenance thing takes 7 hours to complete, the bus can still earn money that day by sending it out for the morning or evening and swapping buses about on this sort of cycle.
For some examples, I can't provide evidence for commercial reasons but a normal operator bus depot of around 160 buses had only 8 AM and 8PM peak bus duties. Some school, some service. Not all these would be in the maintenance cycle. 2 buses did AM and PM duties and between were spares on the network at key points incase of breakdown or delay. Another 2 would likely do both AM and PM duties and then between would be a spare bus in the depot. That leaves 4 AM and 4 PM duties uncovered. These would likely be having maintenance done.
Hong Kong has this huge network at peak time which comes to life with express buses and more local buses etc. Similar to London. Outside of London though, the above is the reality. Operators who can do service work, tend to have buses out all day. Not many do just the peak times (those which have lots of peak buses buses, do often run middle of the day services. Brylaine & P&O Lloyds are some example that spring to mind. Quite a large school bus network and then between the schools, they run a fair few local bus routes. There will be plenty more operators but I was trying to think of some which have a good few routes.
Other firms generally do not have suitable vehicles for the local service routes or they have other private hire stuff which they do. Belle Vue is one example in Manchester. Huge School Bus fleet and they often end up doing school trips and things like that.
While I know and others will know of companies who do have their buses sat around through the day between peak or school times with absolutely no purpose, the vast majority of companies do not or if they do, the buses have purpose such as maintenance or strategic spares.
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