For suburb to city center, you want multi-track train lines which only stop at a few stations and then switch over to a middle track which then goes the rest of the way downtown without stopping. The suburb I grew up in was about 20 miles outside of Chicago and the rush hour express train would get you downtown in about 25 minutes whereas doing the same route by car would take you 40-100 minutes during rush hour.

In Prague, subway does not go to suburbs. Few trams do, but they do not reach the city centre. Not my case at all. The subway route I compare to car is 7 stops + 10 min walk.

What kind of awful subway is it, that takes 35 minutes to drive 7 stops?

I just checked a Rotterdam subway line and it does 30 stops in an hour[0] which is a ~32KM distance as a bird flies[1].

[0] https://www.ret.nl/home/reizen/dienstregeling/metro-b.html [1] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Nesselande,+Rotterdam/Hoek+v...