Chicago doesn't have either of these things.
I prefer elevated trains to buses, of course, but buses can get you more precisely to where you want to go.
Even in the narrow sense (a subway being an underground heavy rail system), that's not true. Chicago's Red Line is fully underground when it reaches Downtown.
As for the original question ... streetcars are good only when they run along historic (pre 1945) routes. Otherwise they seem gimmicky to me and stand a poor second to a genuine subway/metro system.
(Yes, I am aware that most people think the opposite -- ancient New Orleans-style streetcars are kept alive only as tourist traps while the modern Siemens-built trams represent the energy efficient
and air conditioned wave of the future -- but these modern systems are far more in danger of being dismantled when the streetcar/tram fad fades than any of the historic ones).
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