How funny! You don't even know where I got my argument, yet you presume to be attacking it by calling another source names.
How ridiculous to claim that high ridership and packed rush hour trains are not component measures of success.
Without hard stats of rider usage it is about as ridiculous to claim them as component measures as is framing a 2 foot wide window on your house on the estimate of your arm's length. As I said, practically every rail system around the country "looks" full at rush hour, yet most of them are fiscal disasters.
Most roadways are underutilized except during rush hour, no different than with transit.
Not so. Empty roads just sit there making themselves automatically available for the next car. Transit, in off-hours, still operates whether there are riders or not and, by operating, incurs operating expenses.
Of course your assumption that the trains are empty off-peak is completely wrong
Unless you have rider statistics for DART that contradict those that I have seen and studied, you have no basis by which to make that claim. Simply seeing a train and concluding "it looks full to me" doesn't cut it.
And I'll repeat that I am talking about Dallas only
Fine with me. My own opinion of DART when I saw it was not as high as yours. I also believe my opinion of DART to have been justified in its operating expenses and methods. You have yet to demonstrate anything to the contrary to support your claim, and since saying "it looks full to me" doesn't cut it, I am not inclined to accept your evaluation.
Though residents of many other cities judge their transit a success, judging by their votes for expansion and the taxes or bonds to pay for it.)
Think about what you are saying for a moment. There are some populations in this country that think welfare is a success, use welfare, and would vote for it at any given opportunity. Does that make it so? There are many who think affirmative action is a success, use affirmative action, and vote for it at any given opportunity. Does that make it so? If your answer is "no," then why should it be any different for those who think light rail is a success, use it, and would vote for it at any given opportunity?
Other measures of success are the degree and type of development that transit stimulates(just like with roads)
That it is. Do you have evidence that light rail has boosted development more than roads would have?
how many riders are taken off the already congested roads(speeding it up for the remaining drivers)
In most cities, the degree of this is effect negligable and generally accounts for less than 0.6% of trips daily. I'll have to look it up, but if I recall correctly the stats were similar for DART. Do you have anything that indicates otherwise?
and the convenience/personal utility it offers to riders and commuters.
...but inconvenience for drivers who find the roadways shared, blocked, and impeded by a train system running across it.
Trains are packed for sporting events/concerts/etc.(more than 100 nights per year in Dallas),
So in other words, the "it looks full to me" argument.
Bottom line, it is no different than a city/county/regional coalition deciding to invest in roads, utilities, landscaping, zoning, police, firefighters, etc.
Beyond each being a public finance project, that is simply not so. Light rail is one of the most inefficient and costly forms of transit. Whereas roads recoop much of their costs in fees, rail does not and tends to run huge publicly subsidized deficits.
You don't like transit, and that's fine. However it seems that what really burns you & others up, is that citizens are showing their approval of transit by voting to pay for it.
And why shouldn't I? It's my taxes that go to fund the thing, just as it's my taxes that subsidize the lifestyle of lazy drug addicted welfare queens. When other people vote for a project that I don't want and when that project is nothing more than a wasteful money hole that increases government spending and, in turn, the urge for government to collect more taxes from me, I am going to object.
While it is true that the Feds usually pay a portion of the construction, no Fed funds are allowed to pay for operational costs.
No, they normally yank that out of us in sales taxes and/or property taxes depending on the city.
Now that DART light-rail is a success,
Wait a moment there. Beyond the "it looks full to me" argument you have repeatedly offered, you have provided nothing to establish that DART is a success at anything. You could easily do so if it were indeed a success by providing rider stats and government subsidy costs, but so far you have not - only the "it looks full to me" argument. As I noted previously, that argument is simply insufficient.