Re: garbage collection, I don't think it's just urban/rural. I've never lived in the suburbs, but I've moved around enough to have experienced both public and private collection in both urban and rural settings. In all cases the quality of service was generally much higher for public garbage collection.

And yeah, similar experience for public vs private power and gas companies. A thing that I think many free market purists forget is that local officials tend to live with the knowledge that they will have hell to pay at the next election if they allow the public utilities to start pissing people off too much.