National Guard in the subway? New Yorkers have their doubts.

The day after Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a plan to deploy National Guard soldiers and state police troops to the New York City subway system, commuters expressed mixed feelings about whether the extra vigilance would make them feel safer.

Some people welcomed the move Thursday, while others said they were skeptical about the need for more law enforcement and worried about armed soldiers checking their bags.

A pair of National Guard troops carrying rifles walked down the inclined corridor between the Fulton Street and World Trade Center subway stations in lower Manhattan late Thursday morning, past the gelato stand where Aileen Morales works.

Ms. Morales, 31, who commutes there by subway from her home in the Bronx, said she had developed a “poker face” for her commute over the past two years as a form of self-protection. She welcomed the extra security in a system that felt unsafe to her.

“You don’t know who’s coming on the train now,” Ms. Morales said. “That’s the scary part.”

Her colleague, Jim Lozada, 29, agreed, saying an agitated man punched him in the ribs on the subway last year after asking the man to stop pushing other commuters.

Ms. Morales was less enthusiastic about the idea of ​​having her bags randomly searched by troops, calling it “a kind of invasion of privacy.” But she sounded resigned to the possibility.

“I mean, if that’s what it takes, then so be it,” she said.

Officials are grappling with the perception that the system is dangerous, even as crime rates in the metro fell last year. The number of major crimes in the transit system then rose in January, before falling again in February.

In her announcement on Wednesday, Ms Hochul described the law enforcement surge as something that would make commuters and visitors feel safer. Under her plan, 750 members of the New York National Guard and another 250 personnel from the state police and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority would be spread throughout the transit system.

They will join what is already a large group of New York Police Department officers stationed in the subways, where Mayor Eric Adams ordered another 1,000 officers last month.

Ms. Hochul said Wednesday that the National Guard would focus in part on keeping weapons out of the subway system.

But the system is huge, with 472 stations and thousands of train cars in service at all hours of the day. The guardsmen’s presence was not immediately apparent Thursday: State officials said they would be deployed throughout the system over the course of about a week.

While waiting for a train at the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center Station in Brooklyn, Jeremy Sorese, a 35-year-old painter, described the plan as “a waste of resources.”

“It feels very scary without actually telling us why it’s happening, this kind of specter,” Mr. Sorese said.

Mr. Sorese acknowledged that dangerous incidents occur on the subway and said he was pushed onto the tracks in 2019. But the police were not helpful when it happened, he said – it was his fellow passengers who pulled him to safety.

Nate Santos, 36, of Brooklyn, said he would dodge the soldiers to avoid a bag check.

“It’s not like I’m hiding anything,” said Mr. Santos, who works as a brand director for a financing company. “I just don’t want people going through my stuff. So I would probably change my routes or take another mode of transportation.”

Camille Baker, Liset Cruz, Eliza Fawcett, Erin Nolan And Sean Piccoli reporting contributed.