Chicago's transit system is top five because the rest of North American is terrible - not because it's a wonderful system. It's designed to move people between

Chicago's transit system is top five because the rest of North American is terrible - not because it's a wonderful system. It's designed to move people between one central work district (the loop) and their neighborhood or suburb. That's it. It can't be compared to systems like NYC, London, Paris, Barcelona etc. To be fair, Chicago, while populous, only has a few neighborhoods that match the density of those cities, making light urban rail in particular much less feasible. When I lived carless in Chicago (2001 - 2006) it was only possible if you were childless and lived in a small number of densely populated north side neighborhoods (which does not include Hyde Park). Interestingly, the car sharing services are changing this — cabs generally avoided anything but same wealthy, dense neighborhoods. Uber and Lyft serve much more broadly. Anecdotally, in my neighborhood, the number of cars with a Lyft or Uber sign is astronomical - I once counted traffic for 30 minutes and 43% of vehicles that passed my residence had a car sharing sign in the window. Between long-haul, low-friction car hiring services (Zipcar) and short-trip, low-friction car hiring services (Uber, Lyft) I think carless urban life in Chicago is vastly extended to everyone with a good paycheck and no children.