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Transit service ground to a halt after last week's record-setting snowfall, stranding residents who rely on public transportation to get to work or make vital medical appointments.

Ride On bus service was canceled Wednesday and Thursday. On Tuesday, many bus stops were still covered in mounds of snow, forcing riders to wait in the street. Metrorail reduced its hours and only served above-ground stations between Feb. 5 and Friday. All but nine Metrobus routes were back in operation Friday.

Ricardo Hill of Rockville has gone for dialysis in Germantown for the past eight years, but heavy snowfall and canceled Ride On service last week caused him to miss one appointment and almost miss another. He called Montgomery County Fire and Rescue for a ride to the DaVita Dialysis center on Thursday. It took awhile for the Community Emergency Response Team to get to him, but he had no choice.

"I usually catch the bus to the center, but they weren't running," said Hill, 55, who missed his Feb. 8 dialysis appointment because he could not walk down the unplowed roads near his home.

The Germantown Transit Center was again buzzing with activity Friday morning. As Ride On buses thundered into the center, they were met by hundreds of passengers waiting to get to work, supermarkets and just about anywhere but home. A steady stream of cabs picked up those who missed buses or needed to go beyond county bus routes.

Shellise Josephs, 24, of Germantown cracked a small smile as the route 74 bus pulled into the transit center Friday morning. The regulatory analyst for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and native New Yorker said she depends on public transportation to get to work in Rockville. When Ride On suspended its service, Josephs said she was left without a reliable way to work and stayed home.

"In New York, we never had problems with public transportation shutting down," Josephs said. "I'm just glad the buses are running again."

Plowed roads and melting ice also allowed drivers with MetroAccess, a shared-ride, door-to-door service for people whose disabilities prevent them from using bus or rail transit, to rev up their engines and pick up passengers Friday after sitting idle since Feb. 5.

David Mohebbi, president of Gaithersburg-based Challenger Transportation, said MetroAccess began Friday with scaled down service. He added, however, that he expects the service to be at full strength by today.

Challenger Transportation lost "hundreds of thousands of dollars" while taxi and MetroAccess vehicles sat idle for at least a week in Gaithersburg, Mohebbi said.

"We got a lot of calls for cabs but because of the whiteout on Wednesday, we had to shut down and we were only at 30 percent on Thursday," Mohebbi said. "We were not able to get our regulars and a lot of people depend on us to live."

Nonprofits that give rides to residents were also hurt by the snow. Silver Spring-based Senior Connection, which provides transportation to seniors, has been unable to provide rides since Feb. 5, Executive Director Sue Dollins said Friday.

"When you're dealing with volunteers, you're dead in the water when something like this happens," Dollins said. "The people we serve, it's not safe for them to be out, either. We're pretty much at a standstill."