Zeina Farhat, who takes a bus to Wayne, N.J., also said the crowds at Port Authority were intense. She arrived at 4 p.m., then waited in line for her bus for close to three hours, she said.

When she was finally at the front of the queue, ready to board the next vehicle, the authorities shut down bus service so they could plow the roads, she said.

After that, “I did something I thought I would never do,” Ms. Farhat wrote in an email. “I sat on the Port Authority steps, and I considered myself lucky. Imagine how terrible your situation is to think of yourself as lucky to sit on the disease-infested floor of Port Authority.”

Ms. Farhat finally got a bus home four and a half hours after she arrived. When she finally reached her car, it was blocked in by heaps of snow created by snow plows.

Ms. Hoyos, on the other hand, eventually gave up on her commute and sought refuge with a friend in Brooklyn, where she spent the night.

That part of her journey, she said, was easy.

“We took the train to Brooklyn and grabbed an Uber,” Ms. Hoyos said. “No trouble at all.”

A cabdriver calls it a night

Chibani Bennasr, 39, a New York taxi driver, said he got stuck on a block of East 46th Street for an hour and a half after snow and falling tree branches stopped traffic.