[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.
Rennes' actual population is more like 220k, but that still is enough to be number 10 or 11 in France. It's the urban area that comes to around 360k, though there also is the metropolitan area with around 750k. But the city itself is 220k. By any of these means, it's not a megacity, but there are many, many much, much tinier places in the region, regardless of how you define "region".
Yeah, these strange ladies made me nervous because they were distributing swords, claiming possession of which was the basis for a system of government. If you ask me, supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Oh, and then one of these strange ladies took me in and made me breakfast.
Tinier city have a really good tramway system too. Saint Etienne, Tours, Montpellier and many others have a great tramway system that is as good as a metro.