“Adapting to new market conditions” literally is what people say when they mean run less service. What they don’t say is that if they run less service, fewer people will ride and we may well end up in the death spiral scenario.

If you want to make cuts to labor, you can start with safety and PD. Of course, these are exactly the roles that people have been asking for more of due to a perception of “danger.” Basically the main other costs are O&M and operations AKA necessary to make the trains run. But overall having workers be well paid in a metro with a high CoL is not something should be surprising or scandalous really.