Chicago Union Station, the third-busiest rail terminal in the United States with 120,000 daily Amtrak and Metra passengers, marked its centennial in 2025 with the billion-dollar Chicago Hub Improvement Program underway — platforms, ventilation and concourses rebuilt for the next century.
Every long-distance Amtrak train in America touches Chicago: the California Zephyr, Empire Builder, Southwest Chief, City of New Orleans and Lake Shore Limited all originate and terminate under one roof, as they have since Amtrak consolidated the city's terminals in 1972. Six of Metra's eleven commuter lines run in as well, making the station the working junction of the national rail map.
The building itself has been steadily re-gilded: the $22 million Great Hall restoration finished in 2019 with a new skylight that admits 50% more natural light, the Metropolitan Lounge moved into the historic headhouse, and the grand staircases — the ones from The Untouchables — were rebuilt to modern accessibility standards.
The structural work is the Chicago Hub Improvement Program, launched in 2023: a $1.1 billion partnership of Amtrak, the FRA, Illinois, Michigan, the city and Metra to fix the bottlenecks that delay 30 million riders a year. The station itself is in line for $418 million of renovations — widened and ADA-compliant platforms, modern ventilation at track level, new entrances and a reactivated mail platform unused since 2005.
A first $93.6 million federal grant funds the platform and ventilation package, and Amtrak has since stacked more than $690 million in USDOT awards onto the program. Beyond the headhouse, CHIP tackles the track geometry south of the station — including the 1914 lift bridge that still delays trains — preparing the hub for new Midwest frequencies and, eventually, faster corridors.
Our read: arrive by train once — it changes how you read the city. The California Zephyr's morning arrival into the Great Hall is the single best entrance in American travel, and the Metropolitan Lounge makes a sleeper ticket feel like a club membership. For practical purposes: Union Station sits a fifteen-minute walk from the Loop's west edge, the Clinton Blue Line stop is two blocks north, and the legacy concourse is being rebuilt in phases — follow the temporary signage, not your memory of the station.
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