A 30-year veteran of the New Jersey Transit commute, Mr. Gutierrez, 56, said his commute has worsened in recent years.

He considered taking a bus home or the PATH train to Newark, but he figured waiting in Penn Station would still be the most convenient way to get home.

“The whole infrastructure has deteriorated over the years,” he said. “No money and no funding has been devoted to infrastructure and I wonder where all the funding has gone.”

Soma Reo, who works in information technology, said his 10-year-old son was going to miss his soccer practice because Mr. Reo’s train to Metropark in New Jersey was delayed. Mr. Reo, a regular commuter through Penn Station, said the constant service disruptions were disappointing given the price of train tickets.

“Nobody is taking action on the delays,” he said. “Though they say sorry, we aren’t seeing improvements.”

New Jersey Transit, the nation’s second-busiest commuter railroad, has been plagued by delays and canceled trains in recent months caused by a shortage of engineers and a push to meet a federally mandated deadline to install a computerized braking system.

Penn Station, which is owned and operated by Amtrak, has had its own share of problems. Two derailments last year led Amtrak to close off some tracks and rebuild them, causing disruptions that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo predicted would lead to a “summer of hell.”

Amtrak officials said last month that they had completed more track repairs at the station this summer and that they expected service to run more smoothly. Two weeks ago, a New Jersey Transit train passing through one of the tunnels on its way to Penn Station became tangled in overhead wires and had a metal bar slice through its roof. The cause of that damage, which caused no injuries, is still being investigated.