I do agree that the prices are a bit higher than they should be, but in comparison to other modes of transport I think they're perfectly reasonable.
I know it's basically the same price for me to take the car as it would be to take the bus just based on the price of fuel alone, once you start adding the cost of the car and insurance etc. even with GNE's 'high' prices, it's still cheaper. Granted, most of my journeys are the full length of the X21 route so it's not completely representative.
I've just done a bit of quick maths in Excel, taking into account the cost of purchasing the bus and spread it out over 15 years, the cost of the driver at £10 per hour, and the cost of fuel at £1.25 per litre. I 'calculated' the X21, 21 and X66 just to give a rough idea of both long and short routes
Obviously the numbers are VERY rough (and I'm making a lot of assumptions), and they don't include the cost of running depots, maintenance, customer service etc, but it's still quite interesting
For the X21, I came up with cost per passenger of around 95p if we assume that there's an average of 50 passengers per journey
For the 21, I got around 50p if we again assume an average of 50 passengers per journey
For the X66, I got around 10p if we assume an average of 35 passengers per journey
Obviously without knowing any of the actual figures, all I'm doing is speculating, but I feel I'm being fairly conservative with the figures, but I could also be completely wrong
RE: Pricing