I'm amazed the by the network of buses that Google runs in the Bay Area these days... to the main campus, satellites in Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, San Jose, to and from San Francisco, to and from the East Bay, etc. Pretty significant operation, lots of vehicles, lots of people. The thing is that Google's objectives are to get highly paid people to meetings and highly paid people to and from their homes (often in recently gentrified neighborhoods). The fleet of Gbikes is also pretty impressive.

Municipal systems serve different purposes- and those purposes don't always lend themselves to nice, clean business cases (how many private companies will invest in transit to lower-income areas? plenty seem interested in schlepping people from Western Fairfax County or Montgomery County to DC though...).

That said, could these entities be better managed / better run once in place? Undoubtedly (I'm not convinced the government attracts the best managers / operators - I'd actually rather they pay more for better people).