Amanda DeWan does not have that sort of leeway. She has to pick her children up by 6 p.m. or pay a caretaker penalty of $1 per minute, she said.

“I would look way more stressed than this if my train was canceled on the way home,” Ms. DeWan said as she coped with the cancellation of the 2606 she had intended to ride to a 9:15 a.m. meeting in Lower Manhattan.

Instead, she boarded the next train at 7:27 a.m. and rode it as far as Secaucus, where she had to cross over to another platform to catch a train to Hoboken. From there, she planned to hop on a ferry to reach her destination near the World Trade Center.

By then, it almost surely would be past the scheduled start of her meeting.

New Jersey Transit officials admit that the railroad’s reliability dropped off in May after appearing to be on the rise for a few months. But they said it had improved markedly from last year, when the system was plagued by cancellations even after service was cut back and, in some places, suspended altogether.

The railroad had 34 percent fewer cancellations from January through August of this year than in the same period last year, said Nancy Snyder, a spokeswoman for New Jersey Transit. She added that nearly 92 percent of its trains ran on time in August, up from about 90 percent in August 2018.

“We recognize the impact that canceling just one train has on our customers when it happens to be your train,” Ms. Snyder said. “When we have to make the difficult decision to cancel a train for any reason, we strategically select a train that will have the least impact to customers and provides the customer with the best alternative.”