That’s not private sector. Bus companies do not own their own roads and never have. Railroads do own their own infrastructure and pay for it completely out of pocket. Even trolley companies owned the tracks on the streets and maintained them out of pocket. That is, before federal, state and even municipal governments stuck their noses in. It was people like Fiorello LaGuardia—hardly a conservative (a RINO in fact)—that was one of the people who led the way towards switching city street mass transit from streetcar to bus, at great cost to the taxpayer in fact (along with his other public spending that he did with “feddy-bucks”).
Nobody is insisting on having to be forced into one or the other mode, though. Except liberals. Nobody wants to ban automobiles or buses, but the effective federal ban on passenger rail transportation has to go too.
I’m all for a free market in transportation, but I don’t have a time machine to go back and fix those things. Going forward bus intracity bus services don’t need to be government owned at all or ever. Few people realize that Rosa Parks was on a government bus.
Plus, it’s difficult to own a road in a city. Not impossible, but we’re talking about political reality. Most people didn’t and still don’t get basic economics and their instincts are correct in this case. You need some government. We’ve just got way too much of it.