Watch your step while exiting at mundelein.

My travels for this week take me to Mundelein, population 32,641. My younger brother had a soccer tournament in Vernon Hills over the weekend, so I had to take this opportunity to drive over to Mundelein for this review. Unfortunately, the station house was closed and there was no train service while I was visiting, but it didn’t stop me from checking the place out.

Mundelein is a station in Lake County along Metra’s North Central Service. It’s about 39.6 miles away from Chicago Union Station, making the total trip time to Chicago about 1h 15mins. Mundelein is in Zone 4 of Metra’s fare system, which means that a one-way ticket to Chicago will cost $6.75 for Adults, $3.25 for Reduced. However, if you’re a regular commuter, I’d definitely recommend buying Metra’s Monthly Pass, which comes in at $135. (ventrachicago.com) Assuming commuters ride the train every weekday back and forth, this reduces the cost of a single trip in the month of September to about $3.00 for adults.

Connections & Frequency

In relation to Downtown Mundelein, this station isn’t situated in it, but is relatively close. There’s a long, paved path which runs parallel to the tracks and which connects to Hawley Ave., which is within prime walking distance of the Downtown. In total it’s about a 9 min walk, so it definitely not the worst station I’ve visited in that regards. Hawley Ave. is also where you can connect to the 2 Pace busses which serve the station, the 574 Hawthorn-CLC, connecting to the MD-N Libertyville Station, the College of Lake County, and the Hawthorn Mall in Vernon Hills, as well as the 572 Washington Bus, which makes one trip per day per direction from the Waukegan Metra Station to Carmel Catholic High School and vice versa. (metra.com).

Running along the CN Waukesha Subdivision, the North Central Service makes 14 trips per day, with 7 per direction as of December 2025 This makes it one of Metra’s least frequent lines. The North Central Service also doesn’t run on weekends or holidays, which puts it among the Heritage Corridor and the SouthWest Service as some of the more difficult to use lines on the entire Metra system. Mundelein gets served by all 14 trains. While the line Mundelein is served by limits its potential as a large station, as of 2018 the station boasted 276 boardings on weekdays, making it Metra’s 148th most used station. (metrarail.com)

AMenities

Mundelein station sports a fantastic looking brick station house, with a fancy looking interior and plenty of shelters along Platform 1. Specifically, Platform 1 has 3 shelters, the main station building, a smaller shelter with benches just north of the station building, and a very small shack on the south end of Platform 1. There’s even a small selection of books for avid readers to enjoy in the main station house, generously donated by the local library. There are no shelters on Platform 2.

While Mundelein does use 2 platforms, all trains except Train #101 board from Platform 1, which makes Mundelein effectively a single platform station. Mundelein also doesn’t have ticket machines, something which it shares with the rest of the North Central Service stations. You will have to rely on the Ventra app in order to pay for tickets, or you must by your tickets on the train. There are parking machines for pay by hour parking. (metra.com)

Mundelein station is fully accessible, with ramps paralleling the main entrance and a small pedestrian walkway between Platform 1 and 2. There’s also a much larger pedestrian bridge, connecting the station and its parking lot to the Cardinal Square Apartments and Platform 2. The pedestrian bridge is also fully accessible, with ramps connecting both sides of the bridge.

Surroundings & Safety

Development is under way for a new apartment complex directly next to Mundelein station. Known as “Area”, the new development will include an apartment complex of 225 rooms, 17 townhomes, and retail space near Hawley Ave.. (Chicago Tribune) At the far end of the parking lot, there is the Station 250 Apartment complex, a recently finished complex that provides easy Transit accessibility to its residents. To the east of the station there’s direct connection to the Cardinal Square, a luxury complex of condos.

The biggest issue I found with this station is the enormous parking lot that dampens all the benefits of walkability this station provides. It’s very unfortunate that such a lovely station is attached to such a big parking lot. While there have been and still are efforts to improve the surrounding look and of this station, the effect is immediately taken away when looking at the giant slab of concrete that takes up nearly every angle of your view westward. While it is a necessity for train stations that serve large communities that are spread far apart from one another, such as Mundelein, it’s a shame that we need to take a car to take a train in the first place. While I personally don’t like massive parking lots serving public transit, it’s a necessary evil, and as a result I won’t dock many points for it.

On the bright side, the station is very well maintained. It was incredibly clean and pretty for a train station. The brick facade of the building combined with the brick platforms give this station a lovely design. There were no messy corners at the station, and it overall gave me a very friendly and welcoming vibe. That didn’t really come as a surprise; Mundelein is among the safer cities in Lake County, with a crime rate per capita of about 0.7, a poverty of about 2.7k, as an unemployment rate of 3.8%, as of 2023. (datacommons.org) People were walking their dogs, taking a morning stroll, and even settling into their newly leased apartments.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I really like this station. It’s clean, has ever improving developments around it, and is a short walk away from downtown. I love how even if you’re waiting for a delayed train, you can grab a book to read courtesy of the Fremont Library. It has a water fountain, (although I didn’t get the opportunity to test it) a nice pedestrian bridge, and will hopefully get even more development surrounding it. If the NCS had a much greater frequency, and if the parking lot wasn’t such an eyesore, this station could be a truly great one. While not the fault of the station, a well rounded train frequency is one of if not the most important features of a train station, and having poor headways won’t get a station very far up the ladder of rankings. This station has great charm, but it has flaws that aren’t unnoticeable, which is why I have to give this station the respectable but not impressive score of:

6.5/10

Thank you for riding with us.