Mayor Bill de Blasio’s promise to temporarily add 250 more police patrols to Big Apple subways won’t be enough to tackle the surge in transit crimes, transit officials and police sources said Monday. 

De Blasio, bowing to months of pressure from transit leaders, said the move will bring the number of cops patrolling the underground to 3,250.

The 250 cops will extend their shifts and work overtime to cover the transit system during the morning and evening rush hours.

Transit officials said it’s just not enough.

“I think we need more beyond that, but the dialogue between the MTA and the state and the city should continue and I thank the mayor for the additional police officers,” MTA Chairman Pat Foye said at a briefing.

“We need a commitment from City Hall that these patrols will remain dedicated to the transit system as we recover.” 

One veteran NYPD officer had a stronger reaction.

“It’s crazy,” he said. “Those subways are a mess. You have no idea how crazy it is. 250? You need at least 1,000 cops there, and if they see something they don’t want to do anything ’cause they feel they are not being backed.”

“They’re putting a bandaid on it,” another frustrated cop said. 

The subways saw 2.32 felony crimes per million riders in March 2021, the most recent stats available — versus just 1.47 per million riders across the year 2019.

Amid a spate of attacks in the system, MTA officials have asked de Blasio and the NYPD to add more and more police officers. The mayor relented with around 500 cops in February, but crime persisted — including a vicious string of alleged gang-related slashings on Friday.

The alleged perpetrators were arrested hours after the slashing attacks, which occurred along the 6 and D train lines in Manhattan. The mayor insisted the quick arrest “[shows] there is accountability.”

“We’re going to send a really powerful message,” Hizzoner said during his Monday morning press briefing. “We’re going to do what it takes.”  

Hizzoner also took some parting swipes at MTA leadership, with whom he has feuded over the extent and severity of subway crimes.

De Blasio called out transit leaders for hundreds of vacancies in the agency’s in-house police department and said the city would provide NYPD training for the new cops whom the MTA hires.

“We need the MTA to pull their own weight as well. It is easy to criticize. How about simply contributing and helping achieve the mission together?” the mayor asked.

“The MTA needs to step up, they need to hire, they need to fill those vacancies, then they need to do another thing, they’ve got to focus the police force where the riders are.”

Interim Transit President Sarah Feinberg said she would “take the mayor’s word” that over 1,000 cops had been added to the subways since February, despite the confusing numbers.

“If he says those folks are going to the system I think that’s good news and I’ll trust him,” Feinberg said.

The MTA’s largest union, meanwhile, which has been critical of the mayor, said the surge of cops was a “undeniably a big win.”

“The mayor has finally taken his head out of the sand,” TWU Local 100 President Tony Utano said in a statement. “There’s more to be done but this is a significant step forward.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who effectively controls the MTA, said crime was the authority’s “main problem” and agreed that the additional patrols aren’t enough to keep riders safe.

“I think we have been under-policed for quite some time,” he said. “You go back and look at the staffing rate that there was in the subways in, like, the mid ‘90s, we’re below that.”

But, Cuomo added, “To the extent the mayor has acknowledged that crime is a problem in the subways, I say ‘Amen.’”

Additional reporting by Bernadette Hogan, Sam Raskin and Jorge Fitz-GIbbon