Union Station & Ogilvie to O'Hare or Midway: A Train-to-Plane Guide

Two Stations, One Neighborhood

Union Station handles Amtrak's national network — long-distance and regional trains from across the country — plus several Metra lines. If you've arrived in Chicago from another city by train, this is almost certainly where you got off.

Ogilvie Transportation Center is Metra-only, serving Union Pacific lines to the northern and western suburbs. Several of the suburb guides on this site reference Ogilvie as the downtown terminus.

They're roughly a block apart in the West Loop, close enough to walk between with light bags, less pleasant with a full set of luggage.

Why There's No Direct Train to Either Airport

This surprises a lot of visitors, particularly those coming from cities with direct rail-to-airport links. Chicago's system is structured differently: the CTA operates the airport rail connections (Blue Line to O'Hare, Orange Line to Midway), while Metra and Amtrak operate the downtown terminals — and they're separate systems that don't interconnect at those stations.

So arriving at Union Station and needing O'Hare means getting yourself from Union Station to a Blue Line stop, then riding out to the airport. There's no single-seat option.

The CTA Option, Honestly Assessed

• For O'Hare: walk to a nearby Blue Line station (Clinton is the closest to both terminals), then ride roughly 45 minutes to the airport. Standard CTA fare applies leaving downtown.
• For Midway: the Orange Line runs from the Loop, requiring a short walk or transfer from the West Loop stations first.

Where it works less well:

• The walk from the train terminal to the CTA station is the part people underestimate — several blocks, often with luggage, sometimes in Chicago weather.
• Stairs and platforms, particularly with multiple bags.
• After a long-distance Amtrak trip, you may have considerably more luggage than a typical commuter, since train travel has no strict baggage limits the way flying does.

Timing a Train-to-Plane Connection

• Amtrak long-distance trains run late fairly often. Building a tight connection to a flight is genuinely risky — long-distance routes accumulate delays across many hours of travel.
• Check your train's actual status before committing to a plan, not just its scheduled arrival.
• Add real buffer beyond the normal airport arrival guidance. Our standard advice — 2 hours before boarding domestic, 3 hours international — assumes you're starting from a fixed location, not from a train that may itself be delayed.
• If your train arrives during rush hour, both the CTA and road routes to the airport slow considerably.

The Luggage Problem

This is the practical crux for most train-to-plane travelers. Amtrak passengers routinely travel with more and larger bags than airline passengers, because train travel doesn't impose the same limits. That luggage then has to get from a downtown terminal to an airport.

A direct ride handles this in a way transit doesn't: real trunk space, no stairs, no platform transfers, and a single trip from the station door to the terminal curb. For a solo traveler with a backpack, CTA is fine. For a family arriving off a long-distance train with a week's worth of luggage, it's a considerably rougher experience.