Make it a free ride, gov

Come with us, Gov. Cuomo, to learn why your coming LaGuardia Link bus service to the airport should be free to riders. We start at Terminal C. Airline passengers, many of them tourists, pour off planes.

The large number headed for Manhattan are prime potential customers for a bus that would whisk them in seven minutes to the subway for a 15-minute trip to the East Side.

Others, going to Long Island, could connect with the Long Island Rail Road at the Woodside station, a quick second stop.

But, wait, where can tourists buy MetroCards? This Third World airport has terrible directional signs and no indications to MetroCard machines. If you look hard enough, you’ll find a single vending machine inside the terminal, tucked away from the bus stop. It accepts credit and debit cards only. No cash. And no $3 single-ride tickets. It’s a $5.50 minimum, plus another buck for a new MetroCard.

The situation is the same at Terminal D, while Terminal B has two credit/debit card-only MetroCard vending machines. Here, those in the know can use cash to buy MetroCards at a Hudson News outlet.

Now that everyone has a MetroCard, everyone can go back outside and use the card at another machine on the curb in order to pay the bus fare and to get a little white receipt that you can show to prove that you paid after you are on the bus.

Now, let’s find the bus. Inside the terminal, a sign points thataway. Outside, the terminal a sign points thisaway.

OK, being experienced New York travelers rather than befuddled tourists, we’ve now found the Q70 line, which next month is slated to get teal blue, brightly marked LaGuardia Link buses equipped with luggage racks.

For now, let’s hop on the Q70, which stops at Terminals B, C and D. Confused tourists are trying to use cash or MetroCards. The driver gives up and lets them ride.

Off we go in seven minutes to the Roosevelt Ave./74th St., subway station where five lines (No. 7,E, F, M and R) converge.

We hop off with everyone else from the airport ready to again swipe our MetroCards for a free transfer to quick jumps into Manhattan or elsewhere. But wait, stop, think: Why did we have to go through all the rigamarole at the airport?

Why should a tourist have to hunt down an airport MetroCard machine, to buy a MetroCard in order to buy a bus ticket in order to get a free subway transfer?

And why should a New Yorker who already has a MetroCard need to buy a bus ticket at the airport in order to get a free transfer to the subway?

And why should someone who uses coins to pay cash for a bus ticket have to pay a second fare at the subway because cash bus tickets don’t offer free transfers.

Conversely, why should a traveler who takes the subway to the airport have to again swipe a MetroCard again in order to get a free bus ticket?

Since virtually everyone who rides the LaGuardia Link to and from the airport will also use the subway, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority can make the bus free without losing revenue.

Riders from Manhattan or anywhere else would swipe their MetroCards once for a subway trip and then jump on a free bus.

Riders from the airport would jump on a free bus and then swipe their cards for a subway ride, purchasing their MetroCards at a station fully equipped to sell them.

The dream of public airport transportation is a single-seat ride. Let’s start with a single-swipe trip.