The right train to the plane

It was 20 years ago when the Dutch managers of Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport — one of the world’s most innovative and pleasant — landed in Queens to rehab JFK’s Terminal Four. On a visit to the terminal, we asked them if they were going to import to JFK Schiphol’s famous etchings of an insect in all men’s room urinals. The fake fly was found to produce better aim and cleaner restrooms.

Of course, said the Dutchman, “don’t people pee the same way here?” And so the flies fly at Terminal Four. The flying Dutchman also noted that while Schiphol and JFK handle the same passenger load, efficient Amsterdam had a single central terminal, while chaotic JFK had nine terminals spread out.

That sprawling mess is finally getting fixed, too — thanks to Gov. Cuomo’s plans for a $10 billion tail-to-snout airport overhaul.

But Cuomo has still one more thing to copy from our Dutch friends: A direct, swift, one-seat rail ride to the city’s center.

He says he wants to make it happen. Good luck with that, sir. We truly hope you succeed.

Since 2003, JFK has had something called the AirTrain. Running from Jamaica and Howard Beach, where it links up with subway stations, it’s nowhere to a one-seat ride. That makes trips to the airport far too long , if you take public transit — or far too pricey, if you take a cab or car service.

There’s an easy answer. When he was governor in 1968, Nelson Rockefeller wanted to reactivate the closed Rockaway Beach Long Island Rail Road line for a one-seat into Penn Station — then as now the best route. It didn’t happen.

Two decades later, Mario Cuomo and Sen. Pat Moynihan tried again. It didn’t happen.

Another decade went by. Frustrated by buckpassing between the Port Authority and MTA, we invited brass from both in for a meeting.

They explained that a one-seat ride was a no-go because the AirTrain, LIRR and subway cars couldn’t, for various technical reasons, run on each other’s tracks. But a hybrid, called the “fourth car,” could operate on all three. It just had to be designed, at an estimated cost back then of $50 million. Not too bad.

Create that — eminently possible given late-’90s technology, and even easier to pull off now — and run it over existing rail lines between Manhattan and Queens. Voilà, a true one-seat ride.

The MTA and PA men acknowledged this was technically doable and could provide ideal service at almost all times, though during the peak of the weekday rush it wouldn’t be quite as frequent.

And, hung up on that asterisk, we’ve had no one-seat ride since the AirTrain opened in 2003.

To get the one-seat ride he wants and New York deserves, Cuomo must force the MTA and PA to work up blueprints for the fourth car immediately. He also needs to restore the Rockaway Beach line — the ideal route for the train to the plane — for transit, killing the silly dream of making it a Queens version of Manhattan’s High Line.

We love the High Line and were among its first backers, but Queens desperately needs better transit.

Cuomo, returning from Israel today, lands at JFK. He must follow the smart Schiphol model and be the one to finally build the one-seat ride.