The more the merrier.

An additional 250 National Guard troops will be deployed in New York City’s subways for the holiday season and beyond, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday.

The new soldiers will swell the New York Army National Guard’s total, $100 million subway deployment to 1,000 troops as an expected 8 million visitors jingle all the way into the Big Apple for the holidays, the governor said during a news conference at Grand Central Station.

But while the deployment coincides with the Christmas and Hanukkah season, Hochul said there’s no planned end date to draw down the troops because their mission is to instill a sense of safety in the subways.

“I want them to know when they walk through the turnstile they will be safe,” she said of straphangers.

“I’ve heard from many people that the presence of the National Guard has made not just a physical difference, but a psychological difference in how they feel about safety. When people see a person in uniform, NYPD, MTA, transit, even our national Guard, they feel more secure than why it’s a deterrent to those who would break our laws and threaten other riders.”

“They see that sense of security that if they have a problem, there’s someone there to help.”

Hochul argued that her controversial first deployment of National Guard troops into the subways in March has led to a dramatic drop in transit crime.

“It’s about continuing this strategy that has proven its success,” she said.

“Subway crime is down 10% just since last March,” Hochul said. “Only two years since the year 1970 have we had fewer subway crimes than we had this past year.”

But as Hochul conceded, the statistical drop in crimes may not reassure New Yorkers and tourists wary of riding the rails after high-profile subway attacks, however few in number.

Just days ago, a 72-year-old man was randomly shoved onto the tracks in the busy Herald Square station by an as-yet-unidentified creep. 

Major crime in the subways are down nearly 12% overall since the pre-pandemic year of 2019, but a closer look at NYPD transit crime data shows many violent offenses are up.

Murder and felony assaults are respectively up 200% and 55% over 2019’s levels, the data shows.

Robbery and grand larceny were the only major transit crimes that fell from five years ago, according to the data.

When a reporter asked about bumps in violent crimes, Metropolitan Transportation Authority honcho Janno Lieber said those crime categories still involved a “very small” number of actual incidents. 

“We can talk about individual categories, but the point is the overall effort has been paying dividends,” he said.

Hochul emphasized that the National Guard deployment is only one component of making people feel safer on the subway.

The state also chipped in money to install cameras on all subway cars, which Hochul and Lieber said has been accomplished. 

– Additional reporting by Craig McCarthy and Tina Moore