RE: Public transport is the first thing that shuts down in a crisis. Act accordingly.

While I worked for a total of over 32 years for the railway in Canada, and I might add that Public Transportation was not their main concern, only on the Eastern corridor (Via Rail), the main business for CP and CN was Freight. And that was very efficient. In times of really bad weather, like winter conditions in Western Canada particularly, the Rail was the only one still going. We delivered goods at times where the highways were impossible, container trains of 100 cars or so, some double stacked, to terminals around the country. !hat is why I was surprised a few years ago when travelling back from Bregenz, the train went only so far, and not further, and we were bussed around the Arlberg. I was surprised because in Canada, it would be the other way around, Travelling in the Rockies by Highway was often impossible, but trains went through no matter what.
Inconvenient at times for me in a way, since at the away-from-home terminal (Crowsnest Pass on the border between Alberta and British Columbia) instead of getting a return freight, we got pressed into snowplow duty, so at times I was away from home for nearly a week, instead of the usual next day return.
That's what it looks like - but even more awesome if you are the trainman on the plow, going around mountain bends and you can't see the hand in front of your eyes, but you have to give directions to the engineer pushing behind, and if you run with a spreader behind the plow, you have to make sure the spreader wings get pulled in for obstacles like signal posts, switch stands, bridges etc. That is a team effort between you, the roadmaster and the engineer running the locomotives.