If you were anywhere near a TV set in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s, then you remember (and perhaps recoil at the sound of) this jingle: Take the train to the plane!
That train was the JFK Express, the repurposed A train which ran from 1978 to 1990 and was a
dud almost from the start. The big but hardly only fault: It didn't provide a one-seat ride to the airport. (You had to endure an arduous transfer to a free Port Authority bus at Howard Beach.) It did offer several perks, such as a comfortable ride, police on the train, and even on-board ticketing. But by May 1989, daily ridership was down to just 3,700 (each express used four cars), while an average A train could accommodate 2,000 passengers, Jim Dwyer pointed out that year.
So all these years later, here's a look at the commercials that tried and failed to sell New York on the merits of the JFK Express, but left NYC with -- love it or hate it -- a classic campaign. The first spot introducing the service is from 1978; the second is from 1980, and has a commuter taking a stab at singing the jingle. They surfaced on YouTube, from a poster called tvnewsman.
-- Rolando Pujol
Image from Wikipedia
