(The following story by Michael Luo appeared on the New York Times website on August 30.)
NEW YORK — Michael J. Gallagher, who is in charge of operations at Pennsylvania Station, was getting restless this afternoon. He had already walked around the station three times and was now back at his desk, catching up on some paperwork, of all things.
“Usually, the phone would be ringing off the hook with something going on,” he said.
But it stayed stubbornly silent. Same with the radio around his neck, his two cell phones and a pager hanging from his belt.
After months of planning and fretting, it had come down to this: a quiet day for Mr. Gallagher and his team of managers at Penn Station on the first day of the Republican National Convention.
Far from the chaos that many had predicted, commuters who came through Penn Station found it free of the usual throngs and remarkably easy to navigate. And for Mr. Gallagher that meant, well, a boring day.
Mr. Gallagher, who has worked for Amtrak, the owners of Penn Station, for three decades, began thinking about the convention more than a year ago. For the last four or five months, he has had meetings almost daily on it. Finally, it was here, and he had no idea of what really to expect.
All of the station’s senior managers are staying in nearby hotels for the week, so Mr. Gallagher walked to the station this morning and entered through the Seventh Avenue entrance underneath the Madison Square Garden marquee.
Ambling through the station at 6:30 a.m., he noticed that the station seemed emptier than usual. As he walked to his office on the opposite side of the complex, he saw the New Jersey Transit ticketing area next door to his office was nearly deserted. Momentarily confused, he said he asked himself: “It is Monday, right?”
Later, he headed out once again, during what should have been the heart of the morning rush, just after 8 a.m.
“This looks like 10 o’clock on a Thursday night,” he said, stopping at the edge of a normally bustling rotunda. “A typical morning at this time, this would be a madhouse.”
This morning, the rotunda felt almost peaceful, save for the heavily armed police officers and Secret Service agents guarding the stairwell.
Mr. Gallagher and other officials had worried for weeks about the impact of closing six out of the station’s eight main exits for the week, funneling all the traffic in the station through the exit on Seventh Avenue under the Madison Square Garden marquee and the Long Island Rail Road exit on 34th Street near Seventh Avenue. Both of the exits are normally packed during the morning and evening rush. But today, as Mr. Gallagher inspected both exits, traffic flowed easily. Nothing to deal with here, he decided.
A midday staff meeting wrapped up quickly. A manager provided an update about a downed wire near Newark Liberty Airport that was causing delays on some New Jersey Transit trains. Another manager raised the issue of a mix-up that had kept police from opening up a subway exit on 34th Street and Eighth Avenue as an alternative exit to the station. Mr. Gallagher decided to reduce the number of employees posted at various exits to help passengers. “I got nothing else,” he said.
Soon, he was off on another swing through the station. This time, he lingered outside longer, in case someone needed him. This was hardly what he had been expecting, he admitted, but there was still the rest of the week.