Ms. Gutierrez-Scaccetti and Mr. Corbett, who was also appointed by Mr. Murphy, were responding to a crisis of the agency’s own making. It has been losing engineers, to retirement and other railroads with higher pay, much faster than it has replaced them, Mr. Corbett said. That failure has left the railroad without enough of them, particularly in the summer, when some are on vacation and others take unscheduled days off.

The unplanned absences have forced the railroad to abruptly cancel 20 or more trains a day in the last few weeks, frustrating commuters who depend on them to get to and from work. Mary Migacz told the commissioners that, counting this morning, her usual 6:14 a.m. train from Rahway to New York City had been canceled six times in three weeks, adding a half-hour to her trip each time.

“Last summer was a breeze. This summer will be the summer of hell,” Ms. Migacz, who lives in Colonia, N.J., told the commissioners. She was alluding to extensive track repairs at Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan last summer that required trains to be rerouted and prompted Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York to forecast a “summer of hell” for commuters.

That work caused significant disruptions, but it was announced in advance and additional alternatives were provided to help commuters cope. New Jersey Transit also gave discounts to customers whose trains were detoured away from Penn Station.

Some commuters have complained that the spate of cancellations this summer has been more disruptive because of the lack of sufficient warning to allow them to make other plans. After a train is canceled, the next train to come along is often overcrowded or already full, they complain.

Mr. Corbett, who commutes by train from Morristown to Newark, said he felt the customers’ pain. He said one of his morning trains had been canceled this summer. But he said his commute last summer, to his previous job on the Upper East Side, was more torturous.

“It was a zoo,” he said, referring to having his daily train to Penn Station rerouted to Hoboken Terminal, where he had to switch to the PATH train to Manhattan. “It was a dogfight every day. It was ugly.”