[video] This Tiny French City has a Better Metro than Yours | RMTransit
TL;DW: The city of Rennes, France (pop. ~400k) proves that your city doesn't have to be NYC or Tokyo or London to have a very high-quality, frequent rapid transit.
I've ridden the Rennes Metro. It's basically the only kind of metro that should be built today: driverless with platform screen doors and high frequency.