The Star Tribune's implicit threat to Republicans and others that if Minneapolis does not get its way on light rail, the metro area may take what it wants "and maybe a lot more" in the future ("Transit impasse puts more at risk," Aug. 18), clearly shows it's time somebody tells the emperor to put on a pair of pants.

Darkly noting that "since the Great Recession, nearly all of Minnesota's population growth has occurred in this metro area" the editorial suggests that Greater Minnesota would simply be outvoted and ignored in the future if it didn't give Minneapolis the light-rail funding it wants now.

The truth is, the metro area, variously defined, has had well over a majority of the population of the state for more than a decade. But there has never been a consensus in the metro area that the latest light-rail project is a good idea. In using the term "public transit," Minneapolis light-rail advocates would like to suggest a "one for all and all for one" notion of transit, implying that there is something resembling a consensus on light rail in the metro area.

Of course, this argument goes, all sensible people in the metro area support light rail as part of a "broad and integrated transit system."

This, of course, it utter nonsense. Increasingly, east-metro business leaders and even St. Paul DFLers have recognized that they have lost out on a transit plan that is centered on building rail into Minneapolis. Rail advocates have been unable to point to any measurable impact on congestion in the metro area as the result of the billions already being spent on rail, much less the hundreds of millions now being proposed.

Of course, it does seem to be a wonderful economic development tool for the areas where it is located. But the proofless argument that this development may someday deflect future congestion begs the question: What impact does it have on current congestion and congestion in the immediately foreseeable future? Answer: none.

Refusing to spend public state transportation dollars on a local economic development scheme is sound public policy. It is Minneapolis' almost childlike parochial insistence on having this money that is out of place in a serious discussion of transportation policy.

Frederic W. "Fritz" Knaak is a lawyer and former Republican state senator.