WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The 23-mile extension of Metrorail to Dulles costs too much, won’t cut traffic and will fail to carry as many riders as proponents claim, a top Virginia Republican legislator said Tuesday.

House Speaker William Howell, of Stafford, delivered a bleak assessment of the beleaguered rail project in an editorial board meeting with The Examiner, arguing Dulles rail is “not going to be the panacea they think it is.”

“It’s not going to take one person off the road,” Howell said.

Instead, the project may actually worsen traffic in Tysons Corner due to the increases in building density that officials will approve to accompany the line, he said.

Howell also echoed critics of Dulles Rail who argue the more than $5 billion price is far too expensive for the number of riders the line will serve. About 46,500 new riders will board the Metro extension each day by 2030, according to forecasts by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which is managing the project.

“I think it’s incredibly expensive, I don’t think it’s going to be utilized to the point they think it is,” Howell said.

The speaker’s pessimism over the commonwealth’s largest transit project stands in sharp contrast to the Kaine administration and most Fairfax County board members, who see the rail as a necessary link to the region’s only international airport. It has also been touted as a way to reduce gridlock on major arteries in the Dulles Corridor, especially Interstate 66.

“It is absurd to say that this won’t take one person off the roads,” said Gordon Hickey, spokesman for Gov. Tim Kaine. “Of course people will use it. People in Northern Virginia and Washington have been clamoring for something like this forever.”

The entire debate will be moot, however, if the airports authority can’t secure a vital $900 million in federal funds for the project’s first 11.6-mile phase. The Federal Transit Administration is now considering whether the proposed $2.5 billion first-phase price tag is too expensive to fund for comparatively small number of new riders.

wflook@dcexaminer.com