The  City brought in former federal Transportation Chairman and longtime Congressman Norman Mineta to help walk its current rail project through the local political minefields.

You have to hope that either publicly or privately, Mineta spent a good amount of time explaining to the City Council the dangers of waffling on matters of this nature.

Both in Congress and as a cabinet official, Mineta witnessed Honolulu walk up to the brink of a transit decision and then back away for any number of reasons. His lesson for Honolulu: Uncle Sam has plenty of places to spend its urban mass transit dollars if Honolulu seems somehow unready or unwilling to go ahead.

That might help explain why Mayor Mufi Hannemann was so exercised when the Council deadlocked on choosing a transit technology this week. Legally  Hannemann said, he has every right to go ahead and make a decision. And that decision, he made clear, would be to start planning on a steel wheel-on-steel-rail transit technology, no matter what the Council does.

If the Council is so irrelevant on this point, then why was the Mayor so upset?

It’s because of that political perception thing. The folks in Washington who sign off on transit funding (including members of Congress who have their own constituencies clamoring for money)  might take the Council’s indecision as a signal that Honolulu isn’t all that read to go ahead with this multi-billion project.

And it would be a fair reading. Elected officials don’t operate in a vacuum. If half the Council is uncertain or unconvinced, that could mean a good chunk of the body politick in Honolulu feels the same.

The Council’s yes-or-no may not be legally needed to proceed with this  project. But ambiguity, for whatever reason, might just be enough to knock the entire thing, so to speak, off the rails.  No wonder Mr. Mayor was upset.