Chicago Union Station Platform 30-38 Reactivation

A platform that hasn’t carried a paying passenger in decades is about to become the most accessible one in Chicago Union Station. Amtrak has issued notice to proceed on reactivating Platforms 30-38, a dormant mail-handling apron on the north side of the trainshed, and rebuilding it to full ADA compliance. When it opens it will be the first level-boarding platform in a terminal that moves roughly 120,000 Amtrak and Metra passengers a day and still loads most of them off low platforms using stools and portable lifts.

Project Scope

The work raises the platform to car-floor height so passengers roll straight from a climate-controlled boarding lounge onto the train. No ramps, no stairs, no wheelchair lift, no crew member wrestling a bridge plate in the dark under Canal Street. The package sits inside the wider Chicago Hub Improvement Program, which also covers raising and widening four additional platforms with new egress stairs, plus ventilation upgrades to the north and south trainsheds that entered preliminary engineering in the fall of 2025. WSP is the architect on the platform work. HNTB is construction manager. GFT is handling engineering on the adjacent platform and trainshed ventilation package, and A. Epstein and Sons International with FXCollaborative are the architects on the companion Station Modernization project, whose final design begins this fall. A general contractor has not been awarded. Construction is scheduled to begin in late 2026.

Why It Matters

Level boarding is the single largest dwell-time lever available at a stub-end terminal, and Union Station is the third-busiest rail hub in the country running on 1920s platform geometry. Every minute of dwell recovered at Chicago propagates outward across the Midwest corridors that terminate here. The engineering interest is in how it’s being done: rather than shutting down active platforms to raise them, Amtrak is starting with a piece of the building nobody currently uses, which lets the contractor prove the details on a dead track before the same treatment goes to platforms carrying trains every twenty minutes. Funding is layered, drawing on a Federal-State Partnership grant awarded in FY22-23, federal appropriations, and local match from Cook County and the City of Chicago. Amtrak picked up more than $690 million in USDOT grants for Midwest infrastructure in August 2026, so the pipeline behind this package is real.

Project Team & Details