‘We’re not only faster than a taxi, we’re cheaper.’

Die, San Diego Freeway, die!

Rot in Hell, Golden State and Harbor.

Suck methane and explode, Metro Rail.

Why inch along in gridlockstep from the Valley to Long Beach?

Just fly TWA , which offers Flight 321 every weekday between Burbank Airport and Long Beach just about lunchtime.

And back again.

Let those other dopes lose nine pounds of sweat, trapped on the freeway for two hours, pedaling accelerator and brake until their ankles have done the equivalent of a double triathlon, their brains pulped by radio music written for skinheads with scurvy of the frontal lobes. A TWA stewardess could be bringing you a cool drink as you contemplate the ocean they call Pacific.

A tourist-class one-way ticket from Burbank to Long Beach is $57, and first class is $86.

If you want to come back the same day, don’t dawdle on the Queen Mary, because the layover till Flight 142 is only 41 minutes.

There are no lines to fight, not even at the airport. “Oh my God, somebody for Long Beach,” exclaimed ticket agent Cindy Duncan when a passenger appeared at the otherwise deserted TWA counter one day recently.

Was she surprised?

“Sure,” said co-worker Jim Modes. “It’s pretty rare to have someone show up for this flight.”

So how does the airline make money? Well, offering an alternative to the San Diego Freeway wasn’t what the airline had in mind. TWA is appealing to East Coast and Midwest passengers who want to avoid LAX.

This flight originates in Newark and stops in St. Louis. Then it offers passengers their choice of two destinations in “L.A.”--Burbank for the northern crowd, Long Beach for the southerners. As rapidly as the plane can be fueled and provisioned and the flight crews changed, the same plane heads back for the East Coast from Long Beach, calling at Burbank on the way.

That this establishes regular commercial air service between two parts of the same megalopolis is an unintended result, the airline says.

But some executives do use the flight for business, said Vera Reichert, TWA station manager at Burbank.

“About once a month or so, someone shows up,” she said. “Sometimes they fly down to Long Beach, hold a business meeting in the terminal there and come right back. Sometimes they just fly one way, and we don’t know how they get back.

“It’s not so crazy as it sounds. They can hold a half-hour meeting down there and be back here in less than two hours. Some people are just in a hurry to get down there, and we’re not only faster than a taxi, we’re cheaper.”

True enough, according to a manager at Valley Cab Co., who estimated the one-way trip between the two airports would take well over an hour and cost at least $70.

Another crowd found a rewarding use for the flight. “The minimum credit for any flight on our frequent flyer plan is 750 miles,” Reichert said. “So some people, if they need just a few more miles to get an award, they get them on this flight.”

When TWA offered a triple mileage bonus, a round trip between Burbank and Long Beach earned them 4,500 miles--just as if they’d flown to Toronto and back. “There were a bunch of people out here on their lunch hours, flying back and forth to run up mileage,” ticket agent Valerie Lee said.

Another benefit--don’t let this get around, or they might stop it--is that passengers who paid only for coach tickets ride first class anyway because that makes life easier for stewardesses trying to cope with the hit-and-run stopover schedule. Please sir, don’t go hunting around for a seat back there with all those crabby jet-lag cases from Jersey; just take one of these big seats up front so we can tell the pilot to fire-wall it outta here.

Drinks are offered, but there is no meal. TWA might consider the ultimate in airline fast food for this flight. One microwaved shrimp? A very short rib?

And passengers must sit through two showings of the whole by-rote safety lecture about seat belts, oxygen masks (Don’t put the mask on Tiny Tim first--put it on yourself so you can help Timmy when he turns blue) and that business about the floating seat cushions. (Has anybody ever actually floated to safety on an airplane seat cushion? Jury-rigged a sail from a vomit bag and cruised jauntily shoreward?)

The flight from Burbank to Long Beach is roundabout, explaining why it takes a jet aircraft 42 minutes. At least by the schedule. On a recent flight, the actual air time was only 30 minutes.

By contrast, the return flight is as direct as the vacuum hose between your paycheck and the IRS.

The schedule says the flight takes 26 minutes, but it was only 15.

But even the accidental local express can’t escape competition.

Skywest Airlines, a commuter outfit that flies 19-passenger prop planes, offers two evening flights from Burbank to LAX--Like TWA’s flight, the unintended result of a schedule drawn for other purposes.

“But some people are buying tickets on that leg, so starting in June we’re going after that business,” said Skywest’s Burbank station manager, Stephanie Salcedo.

“We’re going to have three flights a day to LAX, and try to convince people they’re better off parking here and letting us fly them over the San Diego Freeway to catch flights there. It’ll only be $28-cheaper than a taxi.”

Now, if only we could get Concorde service to Van Nuys . . . .