Every day, radio producer Brandon Tagoe boards an early morning train from Elizabeth, New Jersey, to Penn Station in Manhattan.

The short ride was supposed to give him more than enough time to get to his “dream job” in New York City by 5:15 a.m. But Tagoe, 28, said New Jersey Transit's recent series of problems and delays has left him consistently late — and that hasn't exactly earned him favor with his boss.

“I had to be spoken to,” Tagoe complained at Penn Station last week. “I had a conversation with my boss about the importance of being on time and was threatened with consequences if this continued.”

“This happens so often,” he said of the delays. “And nothing is done about it.”

NJT has been annoying its riders for years. But a series of holdups, slowdowns and outright cancellations in June — along with aging train cars, outdated infrastructure and, ironically, a 15% fare increase that took effect Monday — has left commuters who make the grueling trip from the Garden State to Manhattan angry and offering little hope of improvement.

“They can definitely do better,” Kanesha Hayes, a 39-year-old garbage worker, told The Post during the worst of the delays last week. “I pay $200 a month, they tell me the price is going to go up, but even so, the service is still terrible.”

“I can't keep being late,” she continued. “I've already received warnings for being late. My job is about being on time and I don't want to be unemployed.”

Talia Crawford, director of advocacy and organizing for the New York-based Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said many of the problems stem from years of financial shortfalls and budget neglect – even though the agency has been allocated a whopping $2.9 billion in 2023.

“New Jersey Transit has had a budget deficit for the past decade – and we are almost in a billion-dollar hole,” she said last week.

But bringing more money into the agency's coffers is difficult because it is competing with all other state-funded agencies in New Jersey for the same amounts.

“Transportation is in contrast to education, hospitals and other public utilities,” Crawford said. “I don't think it has received as much support as it does now because we know how important public transportation is and how many people really use it.”

The consequences of this chronic underfunding have been on full display in recent weeks, as already frustrated commuters have endured a series of nightmarish delays caused by problems with Amtrak's overhead wires, electrical and mechanical issues on NJT trains, a wildfire in the Meadowlands, and a blown circuit breaker that knocked out power between Newark and Midtown stations.

In a statement last week, NJT President and CEO Kevin Corbett said he was listening to passengers' complaints.

“We are as frustrated as our customers, and the frequency and impact of these issues on our customers' quality of life is clearly unacceptable,” Corbett wrote, adding that the agency is working with Amtrak to find the “root cause of the recent spate of incidents on the Northeast Corridor.”

“What we can say is that we operate about 700 trains every working day on hundreds of kilometers of track on 11 railway lines with the same equipment. And these incidents mainly occur on just this one section of track on the [Northeast Corridor] between Newark and New York,” he said.

Amtrak, the owner of the infrastructure and operator of the NJT, which charges about $200 million a year for its trains' round-trip journeys to New York, also acknowledged problems on the routes.

In a June 21 letter to customers, Amtrak President Roger Harris apologized to “anyone who has been inconvenienced” by the spate of problems, saying the issues appeared to be “unique to this equipment and this region.”

“We have established a team with NJT to determine the cause of these damages and implement improvements,” he wrote. “Regardless of the causes that led to these delays, you deserve better service and we are committed to providing it to you.”

Despite the increasing problems, help is in sight.

A spokesperson for NJ Transit said the agency will soon receive 138 brand-new, multi-level cars that are much more reliable than others in the aging fleet. Some of them could be in service by the end of this year.

And late last week, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed a state budget that included a 2.5% tax increase on the state's largest corporations – the revenue from which would go directly to closing NJT's nearly $1 billion budget hole, according to Politico.

“You saw the drama that unfolded in New York City, New York, with the MTA, where they essentially wanted to rely on third parties to solve the financial problems of the transit system,” the governor said, referring to the Big Apple's failed plan to introduce a congestion charge.

“We have all acknowledged that we want to solve our problems in our own four walls, and sometimes that is not painless.”

And then there is the $16 billion Hudson Tunnel Project, which will build a new double-track rail tunnel between Bergen Palisades and Manhattan, according to the project's website.

In addition, the existing North River Tunnel, which opened in 1910 but still handles about 450 trains a day during the week, is to be renovated.

This could ease the eternal pain of former Governor Chris Christie's 2010 decision to repeal the $8.7 billion ARC plan, which would have built two new rail lines between New York and New Jersey.

Last summer, Murphy told NBC's Chuck Todd that his predecessor's move was “the biggest political mistake in New Jersey in the last 50 years.”

Of course, commuters shouldn't hold their breath while waiting for the new rail lines – the Hudson Tunnels won't open until 2035 and the North River Passages won't be repaired until 2038.

Crawford, the transportation activist, said raising New Jersey's corporate tax – which is expected to raise about $800 million annually – will help keep NJT afloat but will not solve the problem.

“It would just get them out of the mess,” she said. “It doesn't address the service issues and improvements that NJ Transit needs. And it won't improve service.”

Nevertheless, she said, it is the first time that the state has invested in public transport as it considers necessary. And it must continue like this.

“It should be a priority and funded in the future … so that drivers really see the changes we need and want,” she said.

Meanwhile, Amtrak and NJT officials jointly announced last week that they will increase inspections and maintenance on a “variety of infrastructure and fleet systems” following the recent spate of service disruptions.

“This will be a holistic effort focused on both Amtrak's infrastructure – including the electric propulsion system that powers the trains, the overhead wire (the system of overhead wires that are part of the electric propulsion system), signals and switches – and NJ TRANSIT's equipment, including the pantograph system that connects to the overhead wire and draws power for the train,” the agencies said in a joint statement.

The passengers, in turn, have little trust in the agency. And even less hope that things will change for the better.

“They have to work on a lot of things to improve service,” says Dalbert Artiles, a lab technician who takes NJT from Penn Station in Manhattan to his job in New Brunswick.

“It's not going to get better anytime soon,” he continued. “I expect it to get worse – and that worries me.”