There is no hard-and-fast rule about either private or government ownership being better than the other. Some private companies (eg the Melbourne Tranway & Omnibus Company) have provided outstanding services; some government service providers (eg Australian National) have shown that they are not interested in passenger services.

The management structure has very little to do with the quality of the service provided. The same rules apply to government run and privately run providers: infrastructure has to provide capacity, vehicles have to be reliable, staff have to be customer-focused.

The only time when changing ownership will make a difference is when one of those rules has been neglected and the process of getting back up to standard is easier under a different form of ownership.

Anything else is just fiddling with financial arrangements is more or less irrelevent to how the system serves the passengers.