No they didn't cut any employees, they cut the hours of all employees.
If you ever ran a business you would undertand the difference. When your budget is cut, you lay people off and tell the remaining staff to do their work. You don't tell everyone that they will come in 4 days a week and get paid 80% - that would crush morale far more than a round of layoffs.

Ergo, the intelligent way to handle sequester would be to gut the DOT headquarters staff including the political appointees. But they won't do that, because the public would not care nor see a reduction in service. Better instead to piss off the public, so they will call their Congress person to complain. It's petty politics, holding the traveling public as a hostage.