In an effort to create the perception of a safer subway environment, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is exploring a reconstruction plan that would roll back underground walls to expose administrative offices, and the presence of transit workers inside them, to subway riders.

Many of the city’s 490 subway stations have concealed office space, typically above subway platforms or across from tollbooths, where transit employees perform a variety of operations, often 24 hours a day.

In essence, the MTA’s proposed plan is to open up that long closed space with large windows, frosted glass, or one-way mirrors, to create a friendly, community-oriented presence and perhaps to deter crime. The more uniformed MTA workers subway riders can see face-to-face underground, the logic goes, the safer they will feel riding trains.

For now, the MTA looks to use the Chambers Street subway station on the 1, 2, 3, and 9 lines as a pilot project for the plan. Depending on it’s impact, the agency could look to renovate more stations.

Details of the MTA’s proposal were revealed Tuesday evening in one of a series of planned focus groups for which 11 subway riders – among them a reporter for The New York Sun – were recruited, in exchange for $100 and sandwiches and pizza.

When participants were asked their impressions of the plan, the thrust of the questioning was security-driven: Would the opened-up design of the underground offices make you feel safer?

The contractor hired to conduct the MTA’s polling, Global Strategy Group, has a roster of largely Democratic clients, including Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Senator Edwards, and a 2001 and potential 2005 mayoral candidate, Fernando Ferrer.

According to the company’s Web site, the consulting firm has aided the MTA in improving its image with riders by undertaking re search projects and design-based initiatives. Messages left at Global Strategy yesterday were not returned.

A spokeswoman for the MTA, Mercedes Padilla, did not return phone calls and e-mail seeking comment.

Neysa Pranger, a campaign coordinator for the Straphangers Campaign, an advocacy group for subway riders that is often critical of the MTA, expressed doubt about the proposed plan. Instead of spending public funds on focus groups for additional interior-renovation projects, she argued, the MTA should spend the money to fix problems that have plagued the transit agency. On December 16, Ms. Pranger pointed out, the board of directors at the MTA is scheduled to vote on a plan to raise the fares on weekly and monthly MetroCards, along with removing 164 station booth agents from token booths.

“More eyes and some more ears in the trains certainly isn’t a bad thing,” Ms. Pranger said. “But you have to wonder: In a time of yawning deficits and a budget crisis, how much is this operation going to cost, and is it really worth it?”

At Tuesday’s focus-group meeting, a three-hour presentation that moved from the platforms of the Chambers Street station to a roundtable conference room at Global Strategy’s loft office in the Flatiron District, the MTA’s proposal to redesign was dismissed as excessive and ineffectual.

When shown computer-generated schematics for the project, Linda, a law student from the Upper West Side, seemed shocked. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty, pretty, pretty,” she said, “but how can anyone up there in that booth help me if I’m in trouble?”

Brent, a father and part-time student, agreed, and said exposing employees to the platforms would only give riders more incentive to bother them with petty questions, such as directions, and keep them from properly doing their jobs. If the MTA wanted to give subway riders an enhanced sense of security, Brent wondered, why not hire additional security guards?

Patricia, a woman from Africa who identified herself as an advocate for HIV-prevention programs, said the only security benefit she imagined from having such an open space would be that, if someone were chasing her, transit workers inside the glass box could open “the doors and let you in” and keep the bad guy out.

Daniel, a Spanish tutor, who said he often used the subway system for late-night rides home, said the workers could quickly become targets for flying objects.

When the participants in the focus group were asked to vote on the plan, the final tally was 11-0 against it.

A spokesman for the 38,000-member transit workers union, Fred Katzman, said he was unaware of the project and wondered if the project was designed as part of a longer-term strategy to replace the 164 displaced token-booth agents.

“If they want to make the subways more friendly,” Mr. Katzman said, “putting these workers in a fishbowl isn’t going to make up for it.”

According to police statistics, overall crime committed in the subway system has risen by 1.6% this year.

The most common form of subway crime, and the category showing the largest increase is grand larceny, according to police reports.

Much of that is by pickpockets, because the theft of a wallet or purse containing credit cards is classified by the authorities as grand larceny.