But as he stood next to his two choices to fix the state’s infrastructure — Mr. Corbett and Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti, his choice to lead the Department of Transportation — Mr. Murphy noted that New Jersey Transit would not be turned around overnight.

“I ask for your patience as we start to rebuild this agency,” he said.

In an interview, Mr. Corbett said that since word of his nomination leaked last week, he has been hearing from friends wishing him well, but also sharing their grievances.

“I’ve had people calling me that’s just like a therapy session,” he said, promising that once he takes charge, “the right kind of people are going to feel like they just had a heavy backpack taken off their back.”

Mr. Corbett, whose nomination needs to be approved by the transit agency’s board of directors, said his immediate focus would be on hiring and safety.

The deadly crash at the Hoboken Terminal, which killed a woman and injured over 100 people, brought attention to New Jersey Transit’s delay in installing positive train control, an emergency-braking system that Congress said had to be completed by 2015 (the railroad was later granted a three-year extension).

But as of last September, only 7 percent of the hardware necessary for new system had been installed, just 125 of the 2,200 components. And of the 1,100 workers who need to be certified for the new system only 137 had completed the process, according to the Federal Railroad Administration

The likelihood that the agency can finish everything by the end of this year seems remote. The agency was already fined $12,000 this month for failing to meet deadlines.